It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World

Wild.

There is no way in hell a movie like It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World could be made in today's day and age, it's such a spectacle of it's time bringing in every famous comedian actor to make a ridiculously fun movie, with great stunts, and yet still be grounded a fair deal in reality. The story follows four groups of people who witness a bad car crash and before the man quite figuritavely and literally kicks the bucket tells them of a briefcase filled with $350,000 buried in a park in California, and very quickly they all make a mad dash to claim the money for themselves with a police chief hot on their tails. I very much enjoyed this movie and in no small part due to the quite star studded cast of the time, just about every famous comedian film actor of the time appeared in some form or another which was sort of a big occasion at the time. You just never saw this multitude of talent come together to work on one picture hardly ever, and it's kinda hard to talk about everyone in turn cause we have about 12 main characters that we see throughou. Nowadays the thought of a multitude of famous actors working on one film is commonplace as water, but each performance is a lot of fun and you can tell each actor brought something of themselves in the part. My absolute favorite being Jonathan Winters, and if I haven't said it already he's a terrific guy and I've yet to see him give a bad performance. The stunt work is great at times and regarding the fact they had to work with 1960s special effects, they really had to do almost everything in camera. They really did make cars just wipeout crash, they did fly an airplane through a roadside billboard, they really did crash an airplane into a restaurant, and what I noticed is like 90% of the stunts is stuff that actually would happen. Until the tail end, every stunt is feasible and could actually be accomplished, there's nothing too absurd or out there but even at the end it's so entertaining you don't mind. Easily the best is the gas station fight scene, I mean not only is it hilarious but the fact that an entire gas station is levelled to the ground during the course of a 2 on 1 fight is amazing to behold. The film has had several edits since it's premiere in 1963, with the original cut clocking in at over 3 hours but the most common one is about 2 hours and 40 minutes so it is a bit of a sit through especially for a comedy film but well worth it. Hell the movie even has an intermission, it just really goes to show how much cinema audiences have changed cause nowadays an almost 3 hour movie could be knocked out in one sitting for the majority of people. It's an epic comedy for sure, but the characters are so normal and down to earth that you really could see yourself in their position and the setpieces don't go to extreme lengths of impossibility. It really is a timecapsule of an older generation of cinema and yet doesn't feel that much dated beyond one or two small scenes and a pretty indecent term that there's no way you could say in a movie now, it's a highly entertaining and genuinely funny movie worth your time. It's a wild ride across California, and the true humor of the film is found in how everyday people can do the most absurd and crazy things over something as basic as money. The world is truly a mad place to live when you get right down to it, and all it takes is one crazy or bad day to bring the lunatic out in you. 4 stars, 8/10! A true spectacle of movie making that should be watched by more people.