Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 0027616219336
Format: Color
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Languages: Array
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Number Of Items: 2
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Release Date: 1993-12-23
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: 1963-11-07

Spencer Tracy heads a hilariously zany cast that stars Hollywood's greatest comedians (Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas andJonathan Winters) and features cameo appearances by every joker and jester in the business from DonKnotts and Jerry Lewis to The Three Stooges. Nominated* for 6 Oscars(r), It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is "an explosive motion picture experience" (Variety)! On a winding desert highway, eight vacation-bound motorists share an experience that alters their plansand their lives! After a mysterious stranger divulges the location of a stolen fortune, they each speed off in a mind-bending, car-bashing race for the lootand the most side-splitting laughfest in history. *1963: Sound Effects (won), Cinematography, Sound, Song, Score, Film Editing.
Stanley Kramer's sprawling 1963 comedy about a search for buried treasure by at least a dozen people--all played by well-known entertainers of their day--is the kind of mass comedy that Hollywood hasn't made in many years. (Another example from around the same time is Blake Edwards's The Great Race.) After a number of strangers (including Milton Berle, Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, and others) witness a dying stranger (Jimmy Durante) identify the location of hidden money, a conflict-ridden hunt begins, watched over carefully by a suspicious cop (Spencer Tracy). The ensuing two and a half hours of mayhem has its ups and downs--some bits and performers are certainly funnier than others. But Kramer, who is better known for socially conscious, serious cinema (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?), is in a mood for broad comic characterization, and some of his jokes are so intentionally obvious (Durante literally kicks a bucket when he dies), they'd have a place in Airplane! Watch for lots of cameo appearances, including Jerry Lewis (who had called Kramer and asked him why he hadn't been invited to participate). --Tom Keogh

Customer Rating:
Summary: 5 Stars for the final 2 minutes...
Comment: I enjoyed this movie as a kid, but watched it recently and found it to be bloated and dated and not all that funny. However, the final two minutes are one of the most profoundly spiritual moments in the history of cinema.

The lesson learned by Spencer Tracy's character, that life is inherently absurd and laughter is the best medicine for melancholy, is one that we can all benefit from. When sadness strikes, I watch the final two minutes several times in a row, and experience a healing catharsis.

This all sounds a little pompous and pretentious (even to me), but it is true nevertheless.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: funny
Comment: Very funny. It was as entertaining as it was many years ago when we saw it at the movies. Good quality picture.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Very Funny
Comment: I remember seeing this movie when it first came out at the movie Theater
Purchasing this DVD reminded me just how funny this movie really is. This movie was made in 1963 and over the years there have been few movies with the same theme but none of them and I mean none of them have come close to the quality of this movie. Like the old Hitchcock Classics this is truly one of Stanley Kramer's best Comedy Classics. So if you're feeling depressed or you just need a good laugh I reccomend this movie. A little slapstickish but truly a very, very well made funny,funny movie. If you like comedy you won't be disappointed.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: It's a Good, Good, Good, Good, Movie!!!!!!!
Comment: Great, cazy awesome, and narly. A comidy thats not meant to be moving, just plain old funny and to keep you on your toes at all times. Some of the jokes are laugh-out-loud funny, some are so bad they make you laugh anyway. Remember to watch for the dieing man to "kick the bucket."

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Nothing else compares
Comment: This movie has a special place in my memories. My dad took the family to see it at he Cinerama Dome in Hollywood in '64, when I was about 10 years old. I thought it was funny then, but I have really gotten to appreciate it more as time has passed.

When it was made, every top billing commedian in the business was calmoring over each other to get into this film. It is a monument to all the great commedians of the time, a virtual curtain call of the great film and stage comedy acts of that great generation, almost a billboard lineup of the Vegas marque of its time.

Stanley Kramer, not your typical comedy director of that time, really got everything he could out of such a diverse ensemble of cast and supporting crew. Everyone who was anyone (especially in Vegas) delivered what was expected, and what we all want to remember from these fine commedians and actors. And what a great, silly, funny story!

I won't go into the plot - the reviews here cover that well. The thing to take from this is that if you want to see the greats from a lost era, and to really understand the sense of commedy of that time, the connection from stage, film, television, this is the movie to watch. If you were alive at that time, that's great - you'll get it easily. But, even if you were not this will connect you with those who were. The commedy is timeless, although some of the lines are firmly rooted in the time ("It's the only way to fly!").

I especially loved the difficulty of the fantastic stunts performed in this movie. The flying scenes were something you simply cannot see in modern movies - now they are all done through CG. Flying through the billboard, or through the hanger - these are just not something you can see in a film these days. Paul Mantz,I believe, was the stunt pilot, who was killed doing flying scenes for the original "Flight of the Phoenix" a few yeas later. Same with the driving scenes. The sequences with Sylvester trying to "come to mama" are amazing. And the sychronized driving scenes - the police cars circling around an intersection to arrive at a precise location at the same time - are fantastic. These things are just not done any more.

But the commedy of the movie is the lasting treasure. It is a compendium of times long gone, and it preserves the wonderful humour of my parent's generation, a much different time.

This film is well worth watching, and is totally enjoyable.

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