IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD. Spencer Tracy, Ethel Merman, Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney, Sid Caesar. Dir. Stanley Kramer, MGM, 1963
I do not generally write about films I stop watching halfway. What's the point? I either have nothing positive to say about it or was in the wrong mood. In both cases I'm ignorant of its full length to perhaps do it justice. In the case of Stanley Kramer's 1963 comedy smash, however, I feel compelled to make an exception.
My problem with the movie is not my mood, nor disappointment because it's not the movie I once heard. In fact, my biggest problem is that I haven't heard it described in glowing terms, or any, since I was about 9. See, IAMMMMW used to air anually on one or another of the networks, often in December. My parents didn't care for it and never watched it, but my friends watched anytime it aired and talked about it in rapturous terms. Until about 9-10 years old, when it seemed to drop out of conversation, or conversations I paid attention to. Today, seeing it for the first time, I understand what happened. My friends stopped finding it hilarious because it's TV/Vegas's brightest comics plus a smattering of aging Hollywood royalty doing their shtik at each other in service of a paper thin plot involving a buried fortune and the chase to get to it first. It's the template for Hal Needham's CANNONBALL RUN, which isn't technically better than IAMMMW but is, to me, much funnier because it's broad, silly shtik featuring the comic stars to whom I related.
I can't say IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD is a bad movie so much as one that doesn't - and is unlikely to ever - speak to me. Born in '67, I'm about 30 years late to find this kind of thing a sidesplitter. By the time I was 10, & I watched MASH & ALL IN THE FAMILY & BARNEY MILLER and if I didn't get all the humor, I know found them funnier and better than the reruns of BEVERLY HILLBILLIES & GILLIGAN'S ISLAND I steeped in from 5-9. IAMMMMW is an all-star bigscreen version of those, even its best moments gags & punchines which telegraph themselves. It's less a traditional feature than the wet dream cast of HOLLYWOOD SQUARES driving very fast as they shout allegedly hilarious dialogue at each other. Only not quite that good.
IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD exemplifies a generational classic. I understand why my parents did not like it, and I see why some of my friends' parents, and most of our grandparents, did. In my first years of watching TV, movies like this were hilarious to people our age:people we saw on quiz shows and reruns acting 'zany.'
I'm not 7 anymore, and though the topheavy cast of comic giants can all be very funny on their own, here they're working from a threadbare storyline which doesn't let any of them do their best work. Spencer Tracy looks bored, at times. I know how he felt.
I know people my age & younger continue to find something in IAMMMMW, and more power to 'em. For my part, I'm happy to have finally seen a movie I've heard about for 50 years, and sad it's not one I can rave about the rest of my days.
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