In 2000, the American Film Institute ranked Blazing Saddles number six on its list of the 100 Funniest Movies of All Time. It was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected for preservation by the National Film Registry six years later. Additionally, former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg cited Blazing Saddles as his all-time favorite film, and the late Roger Ebert gave it a perfect four-star rating, describing it as “a crazed grabbag of a movie that does everything to keep us laughing except hit us over the head with a rubber chicken ... It’s an audience picture; it doesn’t have a lot of classy polish and its structure is a total mess. But of course! What does that matter when Alex Karras is knocking a horse cold with a right sock to the jaw?”

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