Summary
The Great Leslie is a dashing daredevil who delights in performing
stunts for an appreciative audience, circa 1900. An avid
self-publicist, he persuades the manufacturers of a new make of
automobile to stage a great race from New York to Paris. Leslie’s
arch-enemy, Professor Fate, also enters the race, determined to thwart
his long-time rival. Another entrant is suffragette journalist
Maggie Dubois, who intends to win the race to strike a blow for female
emancipation. Assisted by his accomplice Max, Professor Fate soon
manages to eliminate all the other contestants, ensuring that the great
race will become a duel between him and his nemesis Leslie...
Review
The Great Race typifies the
kind of brash blockbuster adventure comedy that was fleetingly popular with
audiences in the mid-1960s. At the time, Hollywood producers seemed to think that all
they had to do to have a surefire hit was to burn up sackloads of cash
and get some seriously big name actors to do some very silly things
in front of a camera. The fallacy of this
strategy was exposed when The Great
Race bombed at the box office and attracted far from favourable
reviews. Badly scripted and directed with no real flair, this
probably rates as Blake Edwards’ least funny comedy.
It’s not hard to see why the film was so badly received: its ramshackle plot barely sustains its near-three hour runtime and the humour is pretty well exhausted in the first fifteen minutes. The paucity of ideas becomes apparent within the first hour but attains truly nightmarish proportions when, for purely time-filling reasons, the screenwriters shoehorn in a tacky version of The Prisoner of Zenda just before the ending. The film is messy, overlong and overblown, and painfully lacking in humour. Its only saving grace is Jack Lemmon’s outrageously over-the-top pantomime villain, who, partnered with Peter Falk in what now looks like a Dastardly and Muttley tribute act, gives the film’s its only decent laughs. Had this been trimmed to about ninety minutes, it might just have worked. As it is, it is almost as hard to get through as War in Peace, and not nearly as funny.
© Derek Adamson 2010
Write a review for this film...
It’s not hard to see why the film was so badly received: its ramshackle plot barely sustains its near-three hour runtime and the humour is pretty well exhausted in the first fifteen minutes. The paucity of ideas becomes apparent within the first hour but attains truly nightmarish proportions when, for purely time-filling reasons, the screenwriters shoehorn in a tacky version of The Prisoner of Zenda just before the ending. The film is messy, overlong and overblown, and painfully lacking in humour. Its only saving grace is Jack Lemmon’s outrageously over-the-top pantomime villain, who, partnered with Peter Falk in what now looks like a Dastardly and Muttley tribute act, gives the film’s its only decent laughs. Had this been trimmed to about ninety minutes, it might just have worked. As it is, it is almost as hard to get through as War in Peace, and not nearly as funny.
© Derek Adamson 2010
Write a review for this film...
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Useful links
- Best French films of 2011
- Best French films of the 2000s
- Best of the French New Wave
- Best of French film comedy
- The best 100 French films
- The most successful French films
- Great French filmmakers
Related links
- Other American films of the 1960s
- The best American films of the 1960s
- Other American comedies
- The best American comedies
- Biography and films of Blake Edwards
To buy this film
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Credits
- Director: Blake Edwards
- Script: Arthur A. Ross, Blake Edwards
- Photo: Russell Harlan
- Music: Henry Mancini
- Cast: Jack Lemmon (Prof. Fate), Tony Curtis (The Great Leslie), Natalie Wood (Maggie Dubois), Peter Falk (Max), Keenan Wynn (Hezekiah), Arthur O’Connell (Henry Goodbody), Vivian Vance (Hester Goodbody), Dorothy Provine (Lily Olay), Larry Storch (Texas Jack), Ross Martin (Rolfe Von Stuppe), George Macready (General Kuhster), Marvin Kaplan (Frisbee), Hal Smith (Mayor of Boracho), Denver Pyle (Sheriff)
- Country: USA
- Language: English
- Runtime: 160 min
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- Monkey Business (1952)
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To buy The Great Race:

Adventure / Comedy


