692 It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

[thelberg]

Bob Mondello's review from NPR.

[Roger Ryan]

Bob Mondello's review from NPR.

That closing sentiment noting "comic rhythms have changed in the past 50 years" so this film may not be as funny as it once was is condescending and a poor critical appraisal. If the "comic rhythm" is off, then it's always been off. If Mondello thinks IAMMMMW is too slow and belabored by today's standards, there's close to fifty years of filmed comedy that came before this behemoth that has zippier pacing and bigger laughs.

[domino harvey]

Which is exactly the reason I've been so hard on Criterion releasing this movie: Many people new to film use the label to expose themselves to new (to them) types and forms of films, and they're going to walk away from this behemoth thinking Hollywood comedies from the classical era are all slow, over-long slogs of unfunny ham

[jindianajonz]

Good thing they put out To Be or Not To Be around the same time!

EDIT: Since I haven't actually talked about IAMMMMW yet, I'll chime in to say that I found it pleasant enough. I got more than a few chuckles out of it, and I certainly didn't encounter the same dull slog a lot of people did. I think as long as you have some idea of what you are getting into, it's a nice way to pass a couple hours. Sure, the thing is bloated, but I kind of view it as the comedy equivalent to the overstuffed sword-and-sandals epics like Ben-Hur- the joy of watching the sheer amount of money thrown up on screen trumps more trivial aspects like plot and character development.

[zedz]

I endured this yesterday and can only shake my head slowly and sadly. Not only is this a steaming heap of unfunny, it's a steaming heap of unfunny that's the size of an elephant, and it just sits there in your living room for hours on end, stinking the place up.

I can certainly see its influence on a lot of later (really bad) American comedy, that strives for humour through sheer hyperactive effort, car chases and yelling (if you think yelling is intrinsically hilarious, have I got the film for you!) and without the benefit of a scintilla of wit or invention. The most interesting thing about the movie is its sheer scale, but that's also the thing that makes it unbearable, and dead in the water as comedy.

All Kramer is doing is piling old jokes ceiling-high, but he seems to have no idea how to make those jokes actually work. I was going to give the following example as a typical gag, but according to the booklet essay it's actually an exceptional gag in the context of the film, a supreme example of its art - which makes it all the sadder.

THE GAG: A guy needs to cross a stream in his car. A little boy assures him that the stream is shallow enough to cross at a certain point, and crosses ahead of the car, getting water up to his ankles. The man proceeds across and sinks completely.

It's an ancient gag, and just about every silent clown from Keaton to Laurel and Hardy to Ben Turpin did a variation on it at some point. Even though you know exactly what's going to happen, a good comedian can make it work through a combination of character nuance, internal logic, timing, and mise-en-scene. Kramer's presentation is inept on all counts. Character nuance? The film doesn't even have characters, let alone nuance. Everybody is just the same thing, embodied by different actors. Something happens; they yell. If we're lucky, they'll fall over or break something (that's as far as character development gets). Phil Silvers delivers plenty of double takes and, yes, he yells, but he does this in every single scene. There's nothing interesting, different, or remotely surprising about the way he reacts to this particular bit of business.

The spatial set-up and internal logic is tossed out immediately and arbitrarily. The kid walks across a demonstrably shallow part of the stream, right in front of the car. You can even see the stones at the surface. The whole point of the gag is that Silvers follows suit and inexplicably / surreally sinks into oblivion. But what does Kramer have him do? Drive off to the left of the path taken by the boy, into a patch of water that's obviously less shallow (there being no stones near the surface). So the car sinking is no longer a bizarre gag, but the consequence of a character doing something inexplicably stupid, after the set-up for the gag established that the character was overly cautious.

And does the car sink? No, not really. Instead, it starts to float off downstream, which could have been a novel twist on the old gag, except that the gag does turn out to be the sinking one, it's just that Kramer gets the car to a completely different part of the river in order to stage that - which is, like, no longer even remotely funny, because it's totally expected. You put a car in the middle of a deep body of water and it will sink. Oliver Hardy getting drenched up to his bowler hat because he steps into a small puddle is a gag; Oliver Hardy getting drenched because he falls off a boat in the middle of the ocean isn't a gag - how and why he falls off the boat has to be the gag. Like a lot of the film, Kramer replicates things that have been associated with jokes in the past without any real idea of how those jokes functioned. Fortunately for him, a lot of people laugh just because they see something that looks like it's supposed to be funny.

Okay, so is there anything else Kramer can do to destroy the comedy of the situation? Well, cutting to different camera setups in order to get rid of any sense of spatial continuity in a gag that absolutely depends on spatial continuity sounds like a good, defiantly unfunny idea, so let's do that, but let's make sure that we don't use this useless, useless cutting to mask the violation of spatial continuity (driving into the wrong part of the stream) that's already enshrined in the mise en scene, because that would be the only possible justification for cutting away from the gag.

No wait, that's not enough. We need to crucify the timing even further. I mean, Silvers is a professional. There's still the remote chance that he might be able to sell the gag through sheer desperation and flop sweat. So why not pad out the deadest part of the gag (the bit where the car is floating downstream) and cut away to some other nonsense before cutting back to the punchline (the sinking car)? And we'd better stage that last bit in the most perfunctory way imaginable, just so nobody misses the point.

Really, the incompetence on display is just staggering. You can see Old Hollywood dying before your very eyes.

[Lowry_Sam]

Bob Mondello's review from NPR.

That closing sentiment noting "comic rhythms have changed in the past 50 years" so this film may not be as funny as it once was is condescending and a poor critical appraisal. If the "comic rhythm" is off, then it's always been off.

Bingo.....It's always been off. Bob Mondello is just trying his best not to offend the dottering old fans of the film that are likely to be not only NPR listeners, but contributing members too.

[matrixschmatrix]

It's funny, the gag you describe was replicated (apropos of nothing) in the Simpsons episode closely modeled on this movie, and it plays beautifully there (as does the rest of the episode.) There's something fascinating about a process that is inspired by an unfunny comedy to do something brilliant.

[colinr0380]

It is because the gag takes about five seconds in The Simpsons!

And you know, while I entirely agree with zedz, the Silvers crossing the stream bit was actually one of the better pulled off gags in the movie! The worst sequence for me for interminably drawn out skits that we all know how they'll end are the couple trapped in the hardware store, reaching its nadir in the section where the husband is persuaded by the wife for reasons best known to herself to hammer at the door one last time, only to have that cause the entire stairway he is on to collapse!

[swo17]

That gets at another fundamental problem with the film. I'm open to the idea of an epic comedy stuffed to the brim with an exhaustive cast of known comic actors, which this film has, but it could have justified the runtime a lot more if it had given, say, each of 30 characters five minutes of screen time, as opposed to most of them getting just a few seconds while the three main groups spend half an hour each trying to land a plane, escape from a locked basement, etc.

[colinr0380]

On the plus side, Mad World does help to make that later ridiculous runaway car scene from Family Plot seem more restrained with better comic timing!

[zedz]

That gets at another fundamental problem with the film. I'm open to the idea of an epic comedy stuffed to the brim with an exhaustive cast of known comic actors, which this film has, but it could have justified the runtime a lot more if it had given, say, each of 30 characters five minutes of screen time, as opposed to most of them getting just a few seconds while the three main groups spend half an hour each trying to land a plane, escape from a locked basement, etc.

Further to that, if all of those characters at least had some basic degree of individual characterization, the actors themselves might have been able to create some sparks, or added something different to the tired gags they trudge through. Out of the main gang, only Ethel Merman stands out, and her subtle personality traits are: 1) she yells louder than everybody else; 2) everybody hates her.

[zedz]

On the plus side, Mad World does help to make that later ridiculous runaway car scene from Family Plot seem more restrained with better comic timing!

Scout's honour, that very thought was running through my mind for what seemed like hours as this played out. I reckon that's just about the worst thing Hitchcock ever did, and I'd rather spend three hours watching that on a loop than sit through this film again.

[Moe Dickstein]

The worst sequence for me for interminably drawn out skits that we all know how they'll end are the couple trapped in the hardware store, reaching its nadir in which the husband is persuaded by the wife for reasons best known to herself to hammer at the door one last time, only to have that cause the entire stairway he is on to collapse!

Not that it matters but it's made pretty clear that Monica is terrified of dynamite and the explosions so that's why she begs Melville to just try hammering the door one last time.

[colinr0380]

The problem is that she has already played out that character trait a couple of times in earlier scenes,and we have had an entirely separate scene of hammering the door fruitlessly for a couple of minutes (while they set fire to the wooden staircase and put it out again), so cutting back entirely for the purpose of that scene doesn't play as a last ditch attempt on the door but entirely for the staircase gag (and inevitably, and cruelly if we consider the wife sending the husband off to get injured, rather than him stupidly injuring himself over and over as previously, though we likely are not meant to think things through that much! But it does kind of foreshadow the way that the women are safely segregated off for the bone-breaking climax). So we are not getting any new or surprising information, just an entire scene built around an inevitable climax that would have been better (slightly more surprising and less calculated) if it had arrived a couple of scenes earlier!

That's kind of what I meant a while ago about the film being made up of 'blocks of stuff' - a great comedy would have a couple of things going on at once to capture the eye, but Mad World kind of separates every character either in pairs or in small groups (thus losing the fun of interaction between all the characters as swo said, saving that up for the animalistic 'pile up of struggling bodies' end scene, but I guess logistics and scheduling of getting all the actors together play their own part in that too), but even more than that, it cuts individual gags up so you have a whole five minute scene for a set up, one for the development of the gag (i.e. screaming in panic) and another for the pay off (such as in the Spencer Tracy on the telephone with harriden wife and daughter scene(s)). That more than anything else is why the film runs on so long - not because it is stuffed full to the brim with stuff, but every individual good moment or idea for a gag has been split into its component parts and intercut with other scenes, losing a lot of the tension, either dramatic or comedic, in the process.

Although at a certain point in this process I do eventually submit to the film, and I do think that a certain quality of unacceptable excessiveness is an interesting and potentially fruitful one to strive for in a comedy film. But I still want Criterion to release A Funny Thing Happpened On The Way To The Forum next for a pacier comic film with a Keaton cameo!

[Jonathan S]

So, is there a funny two-reeler buried somewhere in all this footage?
A 1979 edition of the review magazine Super 8 Collector seemed to think so:

Nicely sliced-together sequences (from a feature with original running time of 192 minutes!) including the airplane through the poster one and the wrecking of the gas station. Good, sharp print quality on this scope print by Rank Labs; the sound recording on our review print was superb and this release is contained in one of Derran's attractive "MGM style" packages. Highly recommended.

That and the running time (sixteen and-a-half minutes) was all we needed to know 35 years ago to shell out around £20 (=£85 now). But I bet everyone who bought the thing watched it repeatedly...

[zedz]

I've started listening to the commentary now (while I wash the dishes, play with the puppy, gouge my eyes out - anything but watch the film again), and it's informative and enthusiastic, if somewhat redundant. For example, did you know that Dorothy Provine had just starred in the TV series The Roaring Twenties? And that Dorothy Provine had just starred in the TV series The Roaring Twenties? And guess which TV series Dorothy Provine had just starred in? The Roaring Twenties! But maybe that was just a meta- comment on the entire approach of the film.

The commentary did provide one incredibly revealing morsel when one of the guys says something like: "A name with a Z in it! That's a guaranteed laugh right there!" Really, that's all you need to know about the comic sophistication of the film's target audience and the ankle-high aspirations of its makers.

[swo17]

Did you originally watch the theatrical or roadshow version of the film? Because if not the latter, you do realize that that is an extra that you are contractually obligated to watch at some point, right?

[zedz]

Did you originally watch the theatrical or roadshow version of the film? Because if not the latter, you do realize that that is an extra that you are contractually obligated to watch at some point, right?

I'm not an idiot! Or a masochist.

Of course, now all the fanboys are going to reverse the normal position and say, "Oh yeah, the roadshow version is terrible. You really have to see the cut-down version to truly appreciate its comic genius."

EDIT: Actually, I now realize that the best way to cover my bases would have been to watch the mercifully shorter version first, then listened to the commentary for the re-bloated version and taken in those added sections in half-distracted eyerolls. I could have got nearly an hour of my life back that way.

[movielocke]

"A name with a Z in it! That's a guaranteed laugh right there!" Really, that's all you need to know about the comic sophistication of the film's target audience and the ankle-high aspirations of its makers.

on a whim I recorded Ace Ventura: Pet Detective off of HBO yesterday, we watched about five minutes of it and it is not very funny at all, but I remember vividly laughing so hard at that opening when it first came out, I still remembered a lot of the lines, like, "come to me, jungle friends" from the many repeat viewings then.

I'm tempted to see the long version of IAM4xW because I'm curious about it, but I've seen it twice in 70mm in the last ten years (which by the way is yet another different version from either of the versions on the criterion release, iirc) with an enthusiastic audience, and just never got why so much forced humor worked so well. Which brings me to Ace Ventura: sort of the 90s equivalent of the level of humor in it's a MadXXX World: we're going to try so hard to make you laugh we are going to shove the humor down your throat. Your THROAT. See! Laugh! It's funny cause I yelled. Yelled! repeated it! it's funny, Repeated it! See! hah!

[MichaelB]

It's the equivalent of horror films that substitute loud BANGS! for anything genuinely unsettling.

[jindianajonz]

It's the equivalent of horror films that substitute loud BANGS! for anything genuinely unsettling.

Galloping ghosts, you almost gave me a heart attack! Don't suddenly drop into bolded capitals like that!

[colinr0380]

It's more the equivalent of those horror films that spend twenty minutes drifting aimlessly around a house threatening the inevitable loud bang before doing the BANG! after the audience has drifted off to sleep. Which is even more annoying!

[Moe Dickstein]

Personally, I prefer the longer edit as I've gotten used to the different laserdisc cut over the years, but actually general opinion over at HTF is that probably a 60/40 split of people prefer the General Release cut of the film.

[knives]

You know you really love a film when you use the term 'get used to' to refer to it.

[Moe Dickstein]

Well, I mean it in the sense that it's the first and only version I saw for 16 years, and so seeing the shorter version always felt like it was missing things. Not in the trudgy sense you imply, but I get it, everyone has to knock this film.