It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

Fresh and Exciting

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This classic is as enjoyable to watch today as it was when I saw it premiering in the theater. The bulk of the cast is comprised of former vaudevillians who have mastered their craft. Nonstop schtick from beginning to end. Great movie!

This hideous thing lasts more than three hours, and allegedly exceeded production costs by a lot. I guess an unfortunate way the producers chose to cut the bleeding was to hire the script writers for a regular 90 minutes movie. Therefore, the dialogue of the second half of the movie consists mostly of inarticulated shouting and yelling. Some of the many (way too many!) actors in the cast do OK with this, such as Ethel Merman who made a career out of overacting. But people like Sid Caesar, Milton Berle or -most of all- Spencer Tracy are completely out of place here.Stanley Kramer directed a grand total of one comedy -this one. It's not difficult to see why. Speaking about his "serious" movies he said "Instead of relying on star names, we pinned our faith in stories that had something to say." Hard to believe this is the same guy who crammed a lot of stars together in this movie and had them yell "aaaghh!!!" every time a car or a plane is about to crash (basically the entire movie).

I just had rotator cuff surgery and this is one of my first film reviews post-surgery. So, although the movie is 3 1/2 hours long, I am being very brief because I just don't have the energy to write longer AND because they are already a ton of reviews for the movie.The story involves a group of seemingly normal people who go crazy due to greed and quickly become unhinged at the process of sudden wealth. In addition to this core group, you have many cameos (many of which could have been used better) of very famous comedy actors of yesterday such as The Three Stooges, Jack Benny, Joe E. Brown and many others.So is this film a brilliant comedy? Not exactly. Subtlety certainly is NOT something you see in the film and Ethel Merman's performance is ridiculously over the top (no one is THAT obnoxious). Instead it's more a turn off your brain and just enjoy sort of movie. Funny, high energy but rarely brilliant or clever...it's well worth seeing and holds up well but also isn't a film that makes the best use of its many stars.

Heard the name of the movie many times before, never watched it.Well, it's pretty lousy, to be honest. It's like "The Great Race" only without the imagination, the plot or the fun. I watched the Criterion restoration, which is 3 hours and 17 min, but I gave up after an hour or so. It's just not interesting, not funny and extremely long.The plot is extremely thin (even for a 90 min film): A few guys race each other in order to get to a treasure first. That's it, nothing more."The Great Race" - which came only 2 years later and is also very long (2.5 hours, depends on the version you watch) and shot in a wide aspect ratio (2.35:1 compared to this movie which was shot in a 2.76:1 Ultra Panavision) - has developments, interesting characters, different situations happening in different places, it has arcs and new characters; This movie has almost none of those. It's just endless talking and driving in cars, with minor stuff happening here and there. It's just boring.It's not horrible. I've seen worse films, but I can't imagine sitting 3 hours watching something like that. It's ridiculous. If it was half the running time, perhaps it would have been bearable.Incidentally, Peter Falk has a (minor) role in this movie too.BTW, I just realized that this movie is rated HIGHER on IMDb than "The Great Race". Can't believe it.