In the middle of “Betrayed,” Max Bialystock’s big Act II solo in “The Producers,” Max interrupts a whirlwind recap of the action with a drawn-out pause where the intermission takes place.John Treacy Egan,the beefy baritone currently tackling the role Nathan Lane made famous, turns to the audience and says, “You know, this would make a great movie.”

He’s half right: It did make a great movie … in 1968. But don’t let the new film’s botched rhythms and chaotic overacting poison your memory of Susan Stroman and Mel Brooks’s whizbang Broadway efforts in 2001. As a return visit to the show confirms, not the on-screen bloat can’t take away from the professionalism still on display almost five years later at the St. James Theatre.

The production occasionally suffers from a case of long-run-itis: The ensemble could stand to clean up its diction here and there, and Hunter Foster (replacing Matthew Broderick as Leo Bloom) and Mr. Egan milk their laughs more than Ms. Stroman, Mr. Brooks, and co-librettist Thomas Meehan might wish.

Time has only rendered Mr. Brooks’s score more inadequate,but his lyrics remain consistently inventive (when you can make them out). “Springtime for Hitler”still belongs on a very,very short list of Broadway showstoppers, and Ms. Stroman’s gift for guiding audiences from one setting to another remains unparalleled on Broadway today.(Ironically, this skill – which fails Ms. Stroman repeatedly in the movie – is often described as having a “cinematic” eye.)

The most impressive stage performers right now, curiously enough, are the ones in the roles usurped on screen by Uma Thurman and Will Ferrell: Anything they can do, Angie Schworer and the marvelously unsocialized Bill Nolte can do even better. Messrs. Egan and Foster scrupulously follow the path laid out by their predecessors, and Gary Beach’s Hitler-in-a-pinch performance remains the show’s comic high point. Only “Queer Eye” alum Jai Rodriguez disappoints as Carmen Ghia.

Why should anyone shell out $110 for a Broadway ticket, you may well ask, when the same material is at your local multiplex for a fraction of that cost? Because it’s that much better. Because you can get on the subway afterward,slump over, affect a Bialystock-esque state of high dudgeon, and say, “You know, this should have made a great movie.”