Movie Review: The Great Race

Push the button, Max!

This one isn’t playing in theaters but I’ve been meaning to do a write-up on it ever since re-watching it with the Firefly family last summer.  When we watch movies as a family I sometimes interject and insist we watch something that I remember fondly from my childhood.  Sometimes it’s a winner, but often things aren’t quite as great as I remembered and, I have to admit, some of the new movies the kids lobby for are quite good.

I sort-of recalled seeing “The Great Race” as a young boy, and thought the kids would get a kick out of the setting and the fact that there really was such a race.  I also remembered the bad guys being funny.  My suggestion was met with much renting of garments and gnashing of teeth and Boy, was I wrong!  I don’t think there is a single movie my family has collectively enjoyed more!  The Fireflies range in age from 8 to 46 and it’s rare we all enjoy the same film, but this one really clicked.  We now frequently quote lines from this film and often re-enact bits of certain scenes.

There has been some talk on a recent thread about usage of CGI in movies.  Personally I can’t stand it.  Actually I don’t care what techniques a Director uses to get images on screen but my problem with CGI is I have yet to see it done where it doesn’t instantly take me out of the movie.  I literally stop, and think, “Hey, I’m watching a movie.”  Well this movie has no CGI and I’d forgotten what stunts used to look like.  This movie is full of them; people, cars and buildings are blown up about every 10 minutes, and they are real people, cars and buildings being blown up.  I don’t even know if my kids even noticed, but I really think that realism is part of what drew them in.  Lots of grown men and women flying through the air and landing on the ground.  I don’t know if they’d ever seen a movie with major stunts performed by real people.  There are two scenes involving flight that are a bit laughable, but even those scenes involve real actors, suspended by wires reciting real dialogue.

And there is a lot of story in this movie.  Sure, it’s a story about an around the world auto race, but it’s about a lot more.  Jack Lemmon is Professor Fate and Peter Falk is his evil sidekick, Max.  Tony Curtis is their arch-nemesis and all-around good guy, The Amazing Leslie.  Keenan Wynne is perfectly typecast as Leslie’s right-hand man, Hezekiah.  The movie is about these two groups; Fate and Max dressed in black, driving a black car and Leslie and Hezekiah in white, driving a white car; and their race from New York to Paris.  But the movie is really about an assortment of other races; men vs. women, good vs. evil, machinery vs. ingenuity, modernity vs. antiquity…  Also it’s very funny.  Jack Lemmon plays a dual role and is hilarious as the drunkard Prince of Carpania.

The film also features Natalie Wood.  Natalie Wood plays Maggie DuBois, a woman reporter bent on showing that women can do the work of men, and advocating for equal rights for women.  This leads to an amusing side story involving the editor of the paper she works for and his wife, who joins the Suffragette movement.

Blake Edwards does a great job of capturing a “turn of the 19th century” feel, there’s even an intermission.  The music and slapstick is great nostalgia, and the costumes, sets and cinematography harken back to the early 1900′s.  The movie clocks in at 3 hours but my kids never complained and Mrs. Firefly and I enjoyed it every bit as much as they did.  This is really a fun, family film.  If you have kids and are looking for something different, give this one a try.

(One slight warning.  The movie does depict a few scenes of alcohol use.  If that is taboo in your household you may want to reconsider.  Except for one scene I thought the alcohol didn’t play a significant role; it was rather normal stuff, for example, when Leslie meets Maggie he offers her champagne, and they have a drink while they are taking.  Prince Hapnick is a tremendous drunk.  We all thought the part was done humorously, but some families may be put off by his behavior.  I think my kids got a kick out of it because unlike “Shrek,” “Up,” or “Toy Story,” it’s not a kid’s film adults like, it’s an adult film kids like.  It’s a movie about grown-ups, in a grown-up world.  Very funny, silly grown-ups, but grown-ups nonetheless.)

Share on Facebook