It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Maybe not since Michael Anderson managed to put together a stellar cast for his "Around the World in Eighty Days" (1956) have we seen quite such an ensemble group of famous faces peppering a light-comedy. This time, it all starts with Jimmy Durante being thrown from his crashing car and surviving just long enough to tell the gathered crowd of a $350,000 fortune buried under the "Big W". Initially the gang decide to work together to find and share the loot, but they can't agree on a formula to distribute it and so quickly it's every man (or dame) for themselves. How to get there? Well there are cars, trains and even an aeroplane put to good use as their "Wacky Races" style antics see friends and families fall out, fall in, row, squabble and use quit a bit of ingenuity to get to the Santa Rosita State Park first!. Meantime, disillusioned cop "Culpeper" (Spencer Tracy) is fed up with his measly pension provision, and it's likely to be his final act to try and locate some stolen cash. Yep. The self same $350,000! He's no fool and as he learns of this group of treasure hunters, he decides to let them do the all of the heavy lifting then just pop up and wave his badge. Can it be that simple? Well, first of all these disparate folks have to find it - and as their journey gradually fills with acrimony and mistrust, you wouldn't want to bet on it. The star here for me is Terry-Thomas, a Brit who happens to be travelling in his car and who picks up the family from hell. They are led by fiery matriarch (Ethel Merman) and her drip of a son and pretty quickly their driver is in on their not-so-secret gig and devising some suitably mischievous plans of his own! Mickey Rooney's "Ding Bell" is also in on the chase; there's Phil Silvers rather over-acting as "Otto" and a slew of other familiar faces like Andy Devine, Zazu Pitts, Peter Falk - even Buster Keaton makes an appearance which is apt for the conclusion is straight out of one of his slapstick efforts from forty years earlier. At 3½ hours duration, it's too long. The action is fun for a while as they scramble for advantage but once we've met each of them and got to know their foibles the joke starts to wear a little bit thin and I found it really sagged, repetitively, for an hour in the middle. The occasionally pithy writing quickly gives way to a clunky screw-ball style that was as predictable as it was strained. The stereotypes of the plucky Englishman, the harridan mother-in-law, the ditzy gal - they all all work for a while but soon become a bit laboured and though it does liven up at the ending, I could probably have done with that about an hour earlier. It's fun at times, but I prefer a little more subtlety in my humour - and there's very little of that here.

It's every man (and old bag) for himself. It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is one of those films that as a child I went to the cinema to watch and then proceeded to talk about it enthusiastically in the playground for weeks afterwards. So I find myself here in my middle age with mixed feelings after just revisiting this extravaganza for the first time in many a year. It's very much a film of three parts to me, and each part impacts differently on the entertainment scale. The first part of this multi cast piece is as madcap and as mirthful as you could honestly wish to see, but this sadly ill prepares you for a middle part that outstays its welcome to the point that you can't believe they stretched it to an original cut of 3 hours! The final third of the film saves it from smug overkill because by now you have invested so much time into the film, you thank the gods for any sort of frivolity - and thankfully the film does lift you back up to the happy place that you had visited an hour previously. The cast are fine, where some brilliant shows are mixed in with the merely acceptable ones, and I wouldn't want to be so churlish as to dissect each actors respective show. However, as a Phil Silvers fan I'm rewarded plenty enough and as a Spencer Tracy acolyte I'm burning candles again in his honour. Yet it's Ethel Merman as Mrs. Marcus that lives long and glorious in the memory here, and honestly I feel the film is worth a watch purely just for her. The set pieces are fine and the stunts are truly a feast for the eyes, but ultimately one comes away thinking this film should have been a masterpiece instead of the overkilled and overlong experience that it is. 6.5/10

_**Epic screwball comedy-adventure with an all-star cast is overlong**_ Released in 1963, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” is grand comedy-adventure about several motorists in the remote desert of Southern Cal learning of a buried cache of moolah in Santa Rosita State Park along the coast 200 miles south. A mad scramble to get to the money ensues. The cast is superlative with too many old-time greats to cite. The opening is compelling, the first act culminating with an amusing sequence where Jonathan Winters’ character levels a gas station in the desert. The wild close with the fire truck ladder and corresponding hospital gag is also superb entertainment. The middle of the film, while fun, can get tedious because emptyheaded shenanigans can only hold your interest for so long. In other words, the movie’s just too long for such madcap misadventures. Nevertheless, it’s a fun, energetic flick with top-rate locations and this is the only way to see so many classic celebrities on screen together. The theatrical cut runs 2 hours, 41 minutes whereas the longest cut runs 3 hours, 30 minutes. There are several other cuts. It was shot entirely in various areas of Southern Cal. GRADE: B-