Skip to main content

No Return:Stanley Kramer's IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD

 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. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cuck Fiction: Charles Vidor's GILDA

 Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, George MacReady, Steven Geray. Dir. Charles Vidor, Columbia, 1946 My favorite erotic fiction deals with cuckolding. The stories fascinate me. As people, cuckolds don't seem to think they're worth nice things. Or happiness. On the other hand, the cuckolding partners and their multiple lovers don't come over as the clear victors, either. Part of the fascination - maybe most of it - lies in trying to decide which party comes out the MOST degraded.  Is it the submissive, sensitive husband and his unsatisfactory size/staying power? Is it the "slutwife" who finds satiety in being transformed into a fuckdoll to humilate her husband? Or is it the lover - often black - who gets to degrade the sexy white lady but who doesn't otherwise matter? As in bdsm scenes, if the cuck is most degraded, that means he also "wins," as his desires to see his wife turned into a promiscuous slut while he gets to be bi without shame are most fulfi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mediocre be thy name: John Gulager's Zombie Night

 Anthony Michael Hall, Daryl Hannah, Alan Ruck, Shirley Jones. Dir. John Gulager, The Asylum, 2013 For those unaware, The Asylum is a film production company specializing in cheapo horror and action titles, most subgeneric ripoffs of whatever horror/scifi/action titles are popular that year. Referred to as "mockbusters," these low budget achievers look like their big-money brethren, often featuring solid B-list casts, as Zombie Night does. Though The Asylum has attracted a following, the more serious, hardcore fans of el cheapo horror (et al) tend to turn up their noses at most Asylum product. Marc Edward Heuck, Our Man in the Valley, summed it up thusly: "I don't watch much Asylum fare, because frankly they're not awful enough, they're just mediocre. Like, they're not content to just have the monster or the topless girl and the requisite scenes therein and otherwise leave talent alone to be unique like Roger Corman was, they micro-manage all the pe...
Post a Comment
Read more

All That Fame:Alan Parker's FAME/Bob Fosse's ALL THAT JAZZ

  FAME. Irene Cara, LeRoy Jones, Richard Belzer, Linda Allen. Dir. Alan Parker, MGM/UA, 1980 The first thing that must be said of Alan Parker's sleeper hit of summer '77 is that, if you're new to it and expect the TV version's "hey kids let's put on a show" vibe, or the later remake, think instead of Bob Fosse's '79 ALL THAT JAZZ. Parker's FAME, & Fosse's picture, are films-with-music moreso than traditional H'wood productions. If that's at once unappealing, I urge that reader to withhold judgment until I'm done loving it. By 1980, my parents deemed me old enough to see an occasional R-rated movie with them, but not FAME. My folks, half a generation out of a working poor life, saw in me an advertising man, maybe a newpaper editor. But not an actor. I had mentioned a desire to audition for Cincinnati's School for Creative & Performing Arts (SCPA, pron. SKUHPAH) which had gone over badly. Not taking me to see FAME n...
Post a Comment
Read more