The Great Race
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Movie Reviews of The Great Race
Movie Review: Truly Great!
Summary: 5 Stars
Whether you prefer comedy, romance, or just plain swashbuckling fun, "The Great Race" has it all. This film is one of the most enjoyable adventures I've ever had the pleasure to see.
Tony Curtis plays the famous Leslie --- The GREAT Leslie --- whose hair is always perfectly combed, whose clothes are always a pristine, unblemished white. He gets kissed by all the pretty ladies, and his teeth and eyes glint with the requisite *bling!* sound. His Houdini-style daredevil-dom has made him a famous man and his accomplishments make him formidable.
Enter the nemesis, Professor Fate (played by Jack Lemmon) --- a man who dresses in black, wears a sinister mustache...and whose schemes to outsmart The Great Leslie consistently fail.
When Leslie proposes a long race --- from New York to Paris --- Fate and his sticky sidekick Max gleefully enter, determined to beat Leslie at his own game.
Natalie Wood plays a determined sufragette eager to emancipate women from mental slavery --- "out of the kitchens, and off the pedestals!" She invades a newspaper office in order to secure a way of reporting the race from start to finish. Her own determined schemes get her entangled in the life of The Great Leslie in more ways than one!
And so, from New York to Paris, we follow our hero, heroine, and arch-enemy through many adventures, including a barroom brawl, a melting iceberg, a foreign prison, a duel with sabers, and the best pie fight in film history!
From the opening credits to the humorous ending, this film provides fun for anybody. Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood create good chemistry, Jack Lemmon is equally brilliant in BOTH his hilarious roles, and the supporting cast is fantastic. I highly recommend this film! You'll laugh your head off.
Movie Review: Blake Edwards comedy masterpiece now on WideScreen DVD!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Blake Edwards "The Great Race" (1965)(was loosely based on a real 1908 auto race) is 160 minutes of WideScreen (Enhanced for WideScreen TV's) TECHNICOLOR action packed comedy staged in the 1908 world of the automobile race.The major difference is this race is 20,000 miles in length orignating in New York City to Paris, France. The main characters & arch enemies are "The Great Leslie" (Tony Curtis) dressed always in white, driving the "Leslie Special". This customized automobile is also white!!!. His nemesis rival "Professor Fate" (Jack Lemmon) dressed entirely in black!! His auto is the "Hannible 8" also in black. The love interest & newspaper suffragette (Natalie Wood) provides the balance to this diabolical race.
This movie builds all the characters perfectly & include all of the necessary gimmicks throughout to include; a massive Western barroom brawl, elaborate Royal Ball, swash buckling sword fight, a Royal Prince coupe attempt & a 2357 pie fight to name a few.
The extras include a 45 minute behind the scenes featurette.
The picture 2001 digital transfer & the 5.1 dolby sound are the best there is!!! This movie is a true family film and is one of the all time most lavish, funniest, wildest comedies ever (If not the last from the great Warner Brothers Hollywood productions). The movie even has entrance, intermission and exit music to give the old flavor of the big Hollywood films.
This movie was dedicated to the greatest Hollywood comedy team (30 years together and 105 films) "Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy
Get out the popcorn and sit back & enjoy "The Great Race". Enjoy.
Movie Review: Maaaaaxxxxx!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
My lifelong friend and I believe this to be one of Jack Lemmon's finest performances, one that he obviously totally enjoyed. Our favorite scene occurs when, after surviving the trek across North America, and crossing on a melting iceburg, barely making their way to Asia, they arrive in a Russian village. With the townspeople standing there to greet them, but in stoney silence, Professor Fate says "Obviously they don't know who I am." He stands in the car and with a drammatic gesture declares "I am Professor Fate!". This is met with more stoney silence,(a truly hillarious moment) whereupon he and Max start fumbling in an English-Russian dictionary to find the words to say. Maggie Dubois (a recent hostage in their long trek) reveals "I speak, read an write English, French, and Russian." and stands up and greets the suspicious crowd in their native tongue, which results in a rousing reaction. Only Blake Edwards could have made this movie what it is, a timeless piece of filmmaking, based loosely on a factual event.
I have five kids, and it wasn't until my last that I found an immediate soul mate with my sense of comedy. She can't get enough of this movie, and we share the hillarity together as often as we can stand it. There is a great line in every scenario - we just love the exchanges between Fate and Max ("Where are you??!!" "Behind the rock!" "Which rock?" " This rock, you idiot!!")
They just don't make movies like this anymore. It doesn't get any better.
Movie Review: Scene For Scene, One Of The Funniest Movies Ever Made
Summary: 5 Stars
Blake Edwards' sprawling 1965 comedy takes the premise of "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" and adds a twist to it. Though lacking the all star cast that that 1963 comedy had, "The Great Race" is every bit as funny and ranks up with "It's A Mad,Mad..." as one of the greatest slapstick comedies ever made.
Daredevil The Great Leslie (Tony Curtis) is loved by all: talented, handsome and kind, he is the ideal man for many woman and his stunts have made him a millionaire. Everyone loves him. Well, almost every one. Enter Leslie's arch nemesis, Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon). Along with his not very smart henchman (to put it mildly) Max (Peter Falk), Professor Fate will stop at nothing to top Leslie and become him. However, every attempt goes hilariously wrong. But he then hatches a scheme that he knows won't fail. He will complete against Leslie in a 20, 000 mile race from New York to Paris and beat him, thus winning the respect of the world. Also competing is beautiful suffragette newspaper reporter Maggie DuBois (Natalie Wood), who captures the eye of both Leslie and Fate. Everything culminates into a nonstop laugh riot, including the greatest pie fight in the history of entertainment.
"The Great Race" is a classic comedy that is guaranteed to make anyone laugh. I highly recommend it.
Movie Review: An excellent live-action cartoon.
Summary: 5 Stars
I first saw this movie on network TV when I was a kid back in the 60's. They aired it over two nights due to length. I've seen it again a few times since then and, unlike a lot of movies and TV from childhood, this one was actually as good as I remembered it.Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis are absolutely hilarious in their roles as Professor Fate and The Great Leslie. Natalie Wood and Peter Falk are equally delightful in their supporting roles as a reporter and Professor Fate's not-very-bright henchman. One of the other pleasures this movie offers is spotting all the movie and TV stars in small roles. Keenan Wynn, Vivian Vance, Larry Storch, and Ross Martin are among the faces you might recognize.
To people whose ideas of movie comedies have been shaped entirely by such fare as "Airplane" or "Me, Myself, and Irene" this flick may seem kind of leisurely in its pacing and tame in its jokes. What can I say? If you think somebody getting slugged with a sex toy is funny, but a pie fight isn't, then you may not enjoy this movie. It is, though, an excellent movie that one can sit down and watch with kids without fear of inappropriate material.
Big budget comedies like this are not something produced very often these days. Buy this one and see how it used to be done.