It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World dvd movie.|
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List Price: $19.98 Features • Anamorphic • Closed-captioned • Color • DVD-Video • Subtitled • Widescreen • NTSC In Theaters : 07 November, 1963 DVD Release : 18 September, 2001 |
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It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World description Stanley Kramer's sprawling 1963 comedy about a search for buried treasure by at least a dozen people--all played by well-known entertainers of their day--is the kind of mass comedy that Hollywood hasn't made in many years. (Another example from around the same time is Blake Edwards's The Great Race.) After a number of strangers (including Milton Berle, Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, and others) witness a dying stranger (Jimmy Durante) identify the location of hidden money, a conflict-ridden hunt begins, watched over carefully by a suspicious cop (Spencer Tracy). The ensuing two and a half hours of mayhem has its ups and downs--some bits and performers are certainly funnier than others. But Kramer, who is better known for socially conscious, serious cinema (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?), is in a mood for broad comic characterization, and some of his jokes are so intentionally obvious (Durante literally kicks a bucket when he dies), they'd have a place in Airplane! Watch for lots of cameo appearances, including Jerry Lewis (who had called Kramer and asked him why he hadn't been invited to participate). --Tom Keogh |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | It's wild, wild! |
| It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (Stanley Kramer, 1963)
Of Stanley Kramer's major films, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World has probably been the most neglected, and that's a shame. It is truly epic in scope, it's much deeper than it first seems, and if you're looking for an all-star cast, it's pretty hard to beat this one; there are at least twenty well-known actors (not all of them comics) credited, and if you watch closely, you may well see another twenty people you recognize in cameos (Jack Benny, Minta Durfee, and Jerry Lewis are just the best-known of the bunch). Adam Baldwin once said of the movie that everyone who was anyone in comedy in 1963 is represented in this movie, and it's pretty hard to come up with anyone they overlooked. The wafer-thin plot centers around $350,000 buried by Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante). After a road accident, Grogan kicks the bucket (quite literally, one of the movie's least subtle, and yet best, sight gags), but not before revealing the location of the treasure to a number of people who'd stopped to help him-- Russell Finch (Milton Berle), Benjy Benjamin (Buddy Hackett), Dingy Bell (Mickey Rooney), Melville Crump (Sid Caesar), and Lennie Pike (Jonathan Winters). These five, along with a number of female travelling companions (the finest of whom is Finch's mother-in-law, played by Ethel Merman in a truly grand performance), begin an every-man-for-himself race to the treasure, all the while tracked by the police chief (Spencer Tracy) of the town whose cops were tailing Grogan originally. Along the way, others get roped into the chase, and the whole thing takes on a monstrous, Rube Goldbergian mien. Running just shy of three hours, this is a movie that, on the surface, stands out simply because it runs just shy of three hours-- who on earth would make a three-hour comedy, and worse, a three-hour comedy that's all slapstick and sight gags? (And Kramer's previous film was Judgment at Nuremberg, to give you some historical context.) Everything about this movie screams "hate me," which is why it's even more intriguing that it's so very likable-- I can't tell you the number of people I know, or whose reviews I've read, that have said something like "this movie encapsulates everything about American big-budget comedy, and yet it's hysterical." Indeed. The reason for this is that this isn't your basic Three Stooges short-- there's far more under the hood in this movie than it's often given credit for. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is Erich von Stroheim's Greed with a nasty Sterno addiction living on skid row. Like most of the comedies I truly adore, this movie is, at its core, mean to the point of brutality. From the moment the five men and their respective companions decide to stop working together, the movie takes on a tinge of bitterness that, one feels, were it unearthed would paint a wide black swath over the celluloid. These characters, to a one, including those who get roped in later (the sole exception is Sylvester, the rather simpleminded son of Merman's character, played wonderfully by Dickie Shawn), show themselves for the morally bankrupt swine they are, and thus, when the inevitable denouement occurs, we can heartily cheer. Because we're not supposed to like these people, though we do. Topping it all off is Ernest Gold's wonderfully chaotic Oscar-nominated soundtrack, which is all the punctuation this movie needs. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is a great film. Great, I tell you, great. **** A |
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