It's A Mad Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) We've never encountered anybody who doesn't remember this movie with a certain degree of fondness.......
And that includes us too.
Yet every time we watch it again (around this time of year to rekindle memories of our Christmas moviegoing past) we can't help thinking......"Why did anyone ever think this was some kind of spectacular, ultimate laugh riot? Why did anyone think this movie was such a big deal?"
First thing that always strikes us........in a movie that features almost every single well known, beloved comedian who worked in films and TV at the time, there's not a single, solitary funny or memorable line of dialogue in the entirety of William Rose's script.
Producer-director Stanley Kramer, who exclusively made dead serious, grimly powerful dramas about hot button controversial issues, evidently believed that just the mere presence of this small army of comics thrown into a wild greedy chase for stolen money was hilarious all by itself.
Kramer felt all he had to do was hurl them into elaborate slapstick-stunt sequences as they hysterically rant and scream at each other for close to 2 and half hours. Hence, laughs would ensue.
Yes, the mere thought of that scenario makes us chuckle. But watching it for 2 and half hours?
Exhausting. And by the time you get to the climax, you my fervently wish that the ever braying Ethel Merman was up there on the runaway fire ladder with the rest of the cast.......and hurled into the Pacific ocean, never to be heard from again.......
To be fair to Kramer and screenwriter Rose, even with their blatant lack of comedy chops, they came up with enough sequences we never tire of watching again.......the ultra-manic Jonathon Winters (the Jim Carrey of his day), pummeling Marvin Kaplan and Arnold Stang as he demolishes their gas station.......Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett's lunatic attempts to pilot a private plane (with the jaw-dropping aerial stunts by Frank Tallman).....Sid Cesear and Edie Adams' escalating series of cartoon-worthy catastrophes while they're locked inside a hardware store basement.......and of course the fire ladder Armageddon awaiting all of them.
And let's not forget to mention Spencer Tracy as the world-weary cop who finally succumbs to the rampant greed affecting the other characters. His mere iconic presence and deceptively quiet underplaying generates more smiles and laughs than any of the screaming, howling comics that surround him.
Okay, we'll face the cold hard upcoming-holiday truth.......that we've become too much of a sentimental softie to practice tough love on a movie we first saw projected on a massive, awe-inspiring wrap-around Cinerama screen.....(think of it as as the prehistoric IMAX).......
Therefore.....3 nostalgic stars (***) for a film every true cinema buff should see at least once.
(And should you end up, like us, strangely addicted to watching it once a year and humming Ernest Gold's earworm main title music out loud in the shower......well, that's on you, boo...)
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