"It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1963) – Classic Movie Review

What’s going on guys? I’m Tyler and to
continue my brand-new series of classic
movie reviews, I’m here to let you know
that “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” is
NoPerfectMovie & a really crappy title,
it’s actually probably the worst thing
about this movie which really isn’t even
that bad of a statement.
Anyways, “Mad, Mad World” is about a group of strangers who stumble across a dying
criminal who in his last breath reveals
that he buried $350,000 (which nowadays
is about $3 million) in a California
state park under a big W, and since the
eight of them can’t decide on how to
share the money equally, it becomes a
winner-takes-all race to get to that
park and through various circumstances they
keep inviting friends, family and
strangers into the race which just
complicates things for just about everyone
including a police chief played by
Spencer Tracy who is watching all of
them very closely as best as he can!
I was super excited to watch this movie
just based on how many things I’ve heard
about it, how it’s one of the best
comedies how it’s Angry Video Game Nerd’s
favourite movie of all time, I saw how
many talented & funny actors were in
this

movie-let alone the ones who just
appear in cameos and the whole idea of
Stanley Kramer (the director of “Guess
Who’s Coming to Dinner”)
having directed a comedy before he made
“Guess Who” and I just sat there and
I thought ‘that’s a very odd mix’ but I
would love to see this large-scale
slapstick comedy and hopefully be funny…
and you know what, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”
might be one of the funniest
comedies I’ve ever seen in my life!
I figured that out just by watching the
animated title sequence at the very
beginning, it was made by (sorry if I get
his name wrong)
It’s Saul Bass
(I didn’t see the Royal Ocean video essay,
I’m sorry-I didn’t) but he’s an animator
who made title sequences that were
really creative & witty and got people
excited for the movie that they were
about to see and what was really
interesting was that this title sequence
is just taking this globe (the world)
and coming up with so many creative
sight gags and bits that you could do in
order to get people
excited, they have an entire sequence
where everyone’s names are in
“alphabetical order” and then hands come
out of the globe to rearrange them, there
are people that come out of the globe
doing these really awkward gags that are
kind of foreshadowing the events of the
movie and I even found out that Bill Melendez
(the voice of Snoopy) was actually one of the animators! You know
it’s a great sign when the title
sequence is one of your favourite parts
of the movie! But easily the best part is
seeing all of these famous actors and
their interactions with each other and
the slapstick that comes with it!
You have… God, where do I even start on
this one: Milton Berle, Ethel Merman,
Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, Phil Silvers,
Jonathan Winters, Spencer Tracy among
many others do some of their absolute
best and funniest work! Two of my
favourites in particular were Mickey
Rooney & Buddy Hackett as these two
buddies who are incredibly loyal to each
other but they’re equally dim-witted, so
then whenever they’re in danger (in fact
they’re the characters who are probably
in the most danger in this entire movie)
whenever they’re in trouble it is always
hilarious to watch them yell & scream
at each other and then look at the
situation they’re in and scream together!
It was just hilarious, I loved every
single second that they were on screen!
Milton Berle is a character that you can
easily identify with as a complete
pushover; he’s constantly bossed around
by his mother-in-law and his wife is so
much more loyal to her mother than him
and there comes a breaking point where
you do really wish that you could just
take these people for him and absolutely
just scream in their faces, tell them off
or how wrong they are!
Eventually he does, but it comes to a
point where with this new sense of
‘freedom’ that he can say or do just about
anything and it keeps you rooting
against him because he’s going about
the way we wanted him to go about it in
the absolute wrong way and it’s actually
what makes him an easy character to
laugh at when he does some of the more
risqué jokes-especially involving Ethel Merman!
One of the best comedic villains ever! You feel absolutely nothing for her
because of her bossy attitude, her loud-mouthed insults, her know-it-all attitude
that disregards everyone’s feelings
except for her own and whenever anything
bad happens to this bitch (which is quite
often) you feel so relieved,
you laugh at her in an instant! It goes
without question her bossiness and
unlikeability is actually the one thing
that every character in this movie can
actually agree upon and it leads to a
joke at the very end of the movie that I
won’t spoil but they took a stupid joke
and elevated it by putting such an
unlikable character as the butt of that
joke! There are so many other
characters that I could go on and on
about, but I’m gonna try and leave it at
this; the characters that I felt sorry
for the most were Jonathan Winters who
spends a good chunk of the movie at the
very dead last of the race especially
when he meets this slimy sort of con man
drifter played by Phil Silvers…
Most of these guys, I’ve
seen like once or twice but some of
them I’ve seen clips at my Grandma and
Grandpa’s house and I know how funny
they already were…
but seeing Jonathan Winters interact off
of Phil Silvers as this incredibly cocky
and full of shit con man, Winters’s
expressions are so exaggerated and
over-the-top that you laugh at him but
you feel sorry for him because he’s
absolutely losing his mind! One of the
most jaw-dropping moments is
just him and these gas station
attendants… and that’s all I’m gonna say!
And the one character that you feel
sorry for but you don’t really laugh at
all that much is Spencer Tracy as this
one police chief who at first glance, you
think is an honest cop who really does
do everything by the book and you get
the sense that he feels that way about
himself but then when his own life is
crumbling personally in regards to his
wife and his children, you really feel
sorry for him and you kind of understand
why he’s following these guys around.
He definitely wants in on the money but
you root for him most because he’s the
smartest person to go about it, he’s very
patient, very calm and I won’t spoil
it but when he does get close to that
money, it leads to a couple huge
surprises that people
can anticipate but the execution and the
payoff were just as jaw-dropping and
mind-blowing as any other moment in this
movie! And speaking of jaw-dropping,
the physical comedy, the slapstick, the action scenes are all so fantastic and the best
part is they’re all practical! Again, you
wouldn’t expect the director of
“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” to make a
slapstick comedy but since this was in
an era where if he could do anything, you
did it practically and if you couldn’t
do it, you didn’t do it at all, I guess
there really wasn’t any way to go wrong
there ’cause the constant car chases are
all filmed on actual streets, actual cars
get wrecked-they get flipped, actors
actually fall out of the car upon impact
or even get dragged along and your jaw
is open the whole time or you’re just
laughing so hard that you’re out of
breath! It’s insane the things that
they got away with-there’s some airplane
stunts that you would not imagine anyone
doing today, I couldn’t even imagine
Christopher Nolan doing stunts like
these today and that really just goes to
show how impressive the stunts were and
how hard-working the filmmakers were!
Even in really cheap rear-projection
shots where the actors are clearly
interacting off of a fake background,
they still look incredibly tangible
because the actors have an actual
background to look at! It’s not like a
green screen where they have to imagine
everything, if there’s another car or a
plane following them, they can actually
see the car or plane and it can
affect their expressions, it can make the
performance feel so much more genuine
and at a runtime of 2 hrs, 43 min
you need that constant energy
and constant investment in what’s going
on screen to really get you all the way
through and I’m happy to say that for
2 hrs, 43 minutes I was never
bored… but there were a couple parts
where I was kind of wondering where this
was going and maybe not in the best way
because there are certain characters
that I think were focused on more than
others, I mentioned how much I liked
Mickey Rooney & Buddy Hackett but
there’s a good 20 minutes or half
hour where it felt like they weren’t in
it at all, they were focusing on this one
dentist and his wife who get stuck in
this one location for the majority of
the movie and the jokes around them
centre on how they can’t get out of this
one location and on the surface level it
was really funny but it wasn’t on the
same level-it wasn’t on the same stakes
or tension or hilarity as the other
characters were. You obviously had to
spend more time with Milton Berle and
Ethel Merman to have that incredibly
tense back-and-forth between the two of
them and this one other character named
Sylvester who a lot of people consider
their favourite… he was fine, I didn’t
really think he was in it enough to
really give me that much of an
impression, if I laughed more than once
at him it was because of those stupid
red shorts that he’s wearing throughout
the entire thing! Seriously was that a
thing back then? And if there’s anything
that I hate on the same level as that
incredibly long title,
it’s that most of the cameos in this
movie really serve nothing to the story.
If you guys hate lazy & forced cameos
in modern movies, watch “It’s a Mad, Mad,
Mad, Mad World”, they are
gonna make modern cameos seem
Oscar-worthy and stunning! I can
point to one specific example; there is a
scene where at an airport there is a
firefighting crew waiting for the plane
that Mickey Rooney & Buddy Hackett
are on and some of the firefighters that
are waiting for them are The Three Stooges!
And they’re all holding up various different props; one’s
holding an axe, one’s holding a hose,
one’s holding nothing but that doesn’t
matter because there’s still
possibilities and you’re so excited!
You’re just sitting there going “Oh my
God! The Three Stooges! What are they
gonna do”?!! I’ll tell you what they’re
gonna do, they stand there for five
seconds and then you never see them
again! There are so many cameos that are
just them for shows-they’re just modelling!
They’re not contributing anything to the overall story-there’s a Jerry Lewis drive-by
cameo for no real reason other than to
go “LADY”!!! And he and he doesn’t even
do that, seriously how funny would
that have been if he had said that!
That’s not to say every cameo goes to
waste, my favourite in particular is
Carl Reiner as this air traffic controller
who thinks he knows what he’s doing and
then starts to completely unravel as
Rooney & Hackett are stuck in the sky
that part was really funny and
if the cameos in this movie were more
like that then I’d be fine and in
regards to-I’m just realizing
I mentioned how there were two points
where I was just wondering where the
movie was going, one of those was
actually near the very end because
without spoiling anything, once they get
to the treasure
there’s still a half hour left of the
movie and for a while you’re just gonna
sit there and go “What else is there to
cover”? But I’m happy to say I was proven
wrong on that end because it does lead
to yet another fantastic car chase and a
finale that… Wow!
Oh my god, you could have
suffered the entire movie and just
seeing the finale would have been
completely worth it-it was so creative,
it was so practical. every character that
you couldn’t stand got its fair share,
the overall ending itself I kind of
anticipated because most movies back
then had to have an ending like that but
nevertheless it still served the themes
of how greed makes us less trustworthy,
less cooperative, less happy with
ourselves which is interesting,
Stanley Kramer the director of “Guess Who”-
I’m gonna keep saying over and over
again, he liked making movies that had
overarching themes and the themes of
greed really do go well with comedy
because anything that can go wrong
absolutely does especially when you put
valuables and possessions over yourself
and the loved ones in your life and the
great thing is the themes really did add
to the comedy and the back-and-forth
banter between all of these incredible
actors and their characteristics, I mean
after all the Big W is a
symbol for wealth and winning of all
things! I don’t really know what else
to say about “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” other than it was hilarious, it was
incredibly well-acted, the direction was
absolutely outstanding! It was made in 70 mm film
to get that large scope of
this treasure hunt and the effort goes
to show and that’s the best thing you can
say about this movie; the effort paid off
so well! I encourage anyone to seek out
this movie, I would check it out on the
Criterion Channel! I would do the
two-week trial and then you can get this
movie as well as many others that I will
review in the future and
without wasting any more time, I’m gonna
give “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” 4.5/5
Guys, thanks as always for watching! If by any chance you have
seen “Mad, Mad World”, let me know in the
comments below what do you thought of it!
I’ve never actually seen “Rat Race”-is
that just as funny, is it better, is it
worse? Let me know in the comments below, be sure to stay tuned for more classic
movie reviews and be sure to like and
subscribe!
Take care!

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