A Pair of Jokers

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And it goes both ways. Where Broderick errs on the side of caution as a performer, Lane is all over the map, all manic emotion and naked vulnerability. That is true both onstage and off. Broderick is Mr. Stability, with a wife--Sex and the City actress Sarah Jessica Parker--and a soon-to-be-3-year-old son, but Lane's personal life is famously turbulent. His father was an alcoholic, and his mother suffered from mental illness. He has struggled to find a steady partner. There's a core of insecurity there. Talking about The Odd Couple's record advance ticket sales, Lane can only focus on his fear of the inevitable backlash.

Some of this angst spills over into Lane the actor. Watch him in The Birdcage: there's no denying his virtuosity, but he goes so big, and in so many directions at once, that his performance sometimes feels brittle and campy and nervous and look-at-me, as if he is running away from real emotion.

But with Broderick beside him, you get a more grounded, more confident Lane. Broderick calms Lane down, helps him laugh at himself a little. "There is just a certain comfort level with him that's unusual," Lane says. "One wouldn't let the other one, you know, fall or look silly. We're protective of each other." It takes some work to get the terminally modest Broderick to cop to his contribution. "There's some truth in that," he shrugs. "If he gets upset at rehearsal, I tend to sort of try to be the reasonable one. But I can be the one who goes crazy and loses his temper too," he adds hastily.

All those dynamics will be writ large when The Producers, which TIME saw in an exclusive screening, hits theaters. Stroman, in her debut as a film director, has given the play an extremely faithful adaptation. It's more Singin' in the Rain than Chicago: fast-paced, no darkness, no interior fantasy sequences, just gags a-go-go. "It's packed full of comedy," Stroman says. "It's a comedy musical more than it is a musical comedy." Much of the Broadway cast returns, although two key roles are taken over by movie stars: Will Ferrell as a neo-Nazi playwright, and Uma Thurman as a Swedish casting-couch cutie. (At 6-ft.-plus, both actors tower over their leading men: Broderick is 5 ft. 8 in., and he's the tall one.)

Of course, the big screen is a long way from Broadway. "Matthew has the advantage over Nathan," Brooks says. "He's done a lot more films. Nathan very carefully has to be on his toes to keep up with the nuances of Matthew's performance, because movies are very focused and very pointed. You don't do close-ups onstage." True, but with the cameras right in their faces, it's more obvious than ever how much fun Broderick and Lane are having. You can actually see the glances zapping back and forth in the climactic courtroom scene, and when Lane, in a moment of Brooksian metazaniness, compliments Broderick on his singing, you can sense them both, after however many hundreds of performances, desperately trying not to crack up. Like all the classic comedy duos, they draw energy from each other, forming a feedback loop that spins faster and faster--although they are both loath to make any comparisons with the legends of the business.

BRODERICK: I'd like to be, ah ...

LANE: Who? Dean Martin?