The Great Race

Movie Information

The Hendersonville Film Society will show The Great Race at 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 17, in the Smoky Mountain Theater at Lake Pointe Landing Retirement Community, 333 Thompson St., Hendersonville. (From Asheville, take I-26 to U.S. 64 West, turn right at the third light onto Thompson Street. Follow to the Lake Point Landing entrance and park in the lot on the left.)
Score:

Genre: Bloated Big-Budget Burlesque
Director: Blake Edwards (The Pink Panther)
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Peter Falk
Rated: NR

The kindest thing I can think of to say about Blake Edwards’ The Great Race (1965) is that it’s shorter than both Michael Anderson’s Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) and Stanley Kramer’s absolutely endless It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), both of which it owes a debt to. That doesn’t keep it from being a lumbering behemoth of 160 minutes of overproduced, overbearing overkill. That also doesn’t keep it from being a painfully accurate historical artifact of exactly why the Hollywood movie died out. For starters, the thing is 10 years out of date. It might be from 1965, but it feels like a relic from the Eisenhower era. Of course, some people like that sort of thing, and as a result, the movie has its admirers. I’ve never understood why.

The film has a bad case of cute and quaint—trying to feel superior to an earlier time that it can’t even settle on. In many respects this story of a New York to Paris car race (taking a westerly approach across the U.S., the Bering Strait and Russia) is simply typical of Blake Edwards, a man who always seemed to feel that the broader a film was, the funnier it was—and if it afforded Jack Lemmon a role that allowed him to shout all his dialogue, it was just plain hysterical. The whole movie plays like a really long TV skit, mixing real locations, soundstage sets (all of which look like they were built and painted just yesterday), a lot of obvious rear-screen work, absolutely no pace whatsoever, and a lot of people who think they’re being a lot funnier than they are. No sir, they don’t make ‘em like this anymore—and The Great Race aptly illustrates why.

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About Ken Hanke
Head film critic for Mountain Xpress from December 2000 until his death in June 2016. Author of books "Ken Russell's Films," "Charlie Chan at the Movies," "A Critical Guide to Horror Film Series," "Tim Burton: An Unauthorized Biography of the Filmmaker."

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3 thoughts on “The Great Race

  1. Rob Dunnam

    Okay Ken, you’re out of the gene pool. You take comedy too seriously. The pie fight was clean fun and the Dastardly Deeds of Jack Lemon reminds us of Wild E. Coyote. People watch movies to be entertained, and apparently you don’t. I’m probably older than you but have not lost it. Maybe it is time for you to retire and get a life…..

    • Able Allen

      Hi Rob. Thanks for the comment. I’m sure it was meant to be good-natured. I’m afraid Ken passed away in 2016, so he won’t be able to receive it.

      • Rob Dunnam

        Thanks for the update on Ken and I will watch the Great Race again tonight in his honor.

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