mrb0775

Fellow reviewer Leon Louis Ricci stated the plain (& sad) truth as he began his review of Mad Mad World with the following 2 paragraphs:

"This Infamous Comedy with all of it's Comedians, Cameos, and Excess never goes beyond Average at Best. Endless Car Sequences that never approached anything as Funny as the Keystone Cops and THAT was done Before Movies Learned to Talk.

Ethel Merman all but Ruins the Movie and starts Shouting, Yelling, and generally is Overbearing, Obnoxious, Grating, and Insufferable from Her First Scene and it Never Stops in the Movie's Long, Long, Long, Long Running Time."

Mr Ricci could have also noted the obvious fact that the writers of the movie in trying to provide material for a large collection of people who were the most well known comic actors of the early 1960s, resulted in those writers failing to invent even 4 or 5 memorably funny lines for those comedians to speak in a film that's just under 2 hrs & 40 min long. I defy any of the easily pleased folks who think Mad World is the funniest movie ever, to name even 4 truly funny lines that are heard in this long, long movie. One enthusiastic fan of the film wrote in his IMDb review that he experienced the film at 9 years. Well, maybe to people with the sort of sense of humor found in typical 9 year olds, think such things as the Sid Caesar character and his wife destroying the stock room of a hardware store that they're trapped in is laugh out loud funny, but I'd think that adults would find well written comedic lines delivered by veteran performers to be much funnier than sheer destruction. But apparently the movie's writers merely thought that they could cause audience members to be screaming with laughter by inventing scenes as basic as a building at a gas station falling over because 2 idiots had been involved in a brawl that involved them throwing each other into walls. That scene was about as funny as those found in some of John Wayne's weakest and most mediocre westerns in which a barroom brawl breaks out and about a dozen cowboys are suddenly breaking whiskey bottles over each other's heads, or bashing other guys in the back with wooden chairs. Of course folks who've ever been involved in, or even just witnessed, an actual barroom fight that put people in the hospital, or even caused a death, know how stupid & unfunny that the ridiculous bar fights in some of the Duke's worst movies really are. Yup, make-believe fighting & destruction really pales in comic value, if it's compared to well written lines which are spoken by skilled comedians who have excellent comic timing. But truly funny lines are in extremely short supply in Mad Mad World, even though the nearly 2 & 3 quarter hour long running time of the film sure provided ample time to include enough lines funny enough that many would easily spring to mind! However, compare Mad Mad World to 1981's Arthur, in which Dudley Moore played a rich lush, who arguably, (but many agree), was the funniest drunk who ever appeared in a movie, although the late Mr Moore did not drink or use drugs. (I have nothing against drinking, myself) Anyhow, few people, if any, would even try to argue that the drunk that Jim Backus played in Mad World, was even a fraction as funny as the lush that Moore played, particularly since Mad World's writer's did not supply Mr Backus with any dialog that was truly clever or funny. Plus, not only was Mr Moore excellent at portraying the mannerisms & actions of a drunk, but the actor was fortunate enough to have been given some of the funniest and most clever lines that ever came out of the mouth of a drunk in a Hollywood movie. And although at a mere 1 hour and 37 min length, Arthur is FAR shorter than Mad World is, I can easily name 9 or 10 lines in that film which are spoken by Mr Moore's Arthur character, or by Arthur's butler Hobson, played by John Gielgud, (who won an Oscar for his comic role), YET NO fan of Mad World is able to name even half that number of truly clever & funny lines heard from its cast of characters, EVEN though a much larger number of people have lines in Mad World than the far smaller number of performers heard in Arthur. So I'm being generous in giving Mad World 3 stars out of 10, because though the movie truly strains in attempting to be funny since its lack of clever, funny lines for the comic actors to speak, left the film's creators having to resort to using loud mouthed characters arguing, fighting, and creating destruction, in the absence of intelligent comedy. So the 3 stars I think the movie does merit are due to it containing a few mildly entertaining scenes, and a musical theme heard throughout the film that's actually MORE rousing & enjoyable to hear than most of the dumb nonsense heard from some underused comedians who were just forced to constantly argue, yell, or brawl, instead of actually having much that was funny for them to say!

Just read Wikipedia's article about this film "Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080", and concerning the movie's director, Ms Chantal Akerman, the article's author wrote this: Akerman used an all female crew for the film, which she later said "didn't work that well - not because they were women but because I didn't choose them. It was enough just to be a woman to work on my film ... so the shooting was awful". The film had a production budget of $120,000, but many Marvel superhero movies cost well over $120 million, that's a thousand times as much! So the fact that a film shoot conducted solely by women, was able to produce a 3 hour plus film, on a tiny budget, which wouldn't pay for a half day's shooting on one of Hollywood's juvenile comic book movies, yet the movie still managed to make a type of social statement, are, IMO, THE 2 main factors that moved critics to pull such a minor & minimalist film out of obscurity, & make the insane choice of naming it as the #1 Greatest Movie of all time! Yes, I'm glad that women in recent years, have finally gotten opportunities to create movies which present the female perspective with the full consideration that it deserves. And I share the opinion of most movie critics that the majority of Hollywood's movie productions simply waste vast sums of money with little creative value resulting from each dollar that's used to make a typical American film. So I understand precisely why movie reviewers like to champion & publicize low budget movies which otherwise might remain unknown to most movie fans. Just as I realize why the critics also have a particular sympathy for how female movie makers have long struggled to achieve opportunities to adequately present the world from a woman's point of view. BUT, as the term "movie" has always indicated, motion pictures should involve movement, so naming a film as the greatest movie of all time, although it includes a lot of static shots in it, which each last for 4 minutes, or more, just points to how ridiculous that the Sight & Sound critic's poll has become, largely due to reviewers trying to be politically correct. BTW, in no way would anyone who knows me, ever define me as being a conservative, a fact I mention, because most folks who are heard complaining about political correctness usually tend to hold conservative political views. No, my views on issues, particularly on social issues, definitely put me in the progressive camp.

The Witch is a very dull & pretentious film about religious fanatics. But IMO, at least it earns 3 of 10 stars for some fine photography, good acting, & realistic set design & costuming. But the film is such a SLOW CRAWL, never reaching a strong climax that might have made it worthwhile to slog through all of its tedium! Over the years I've often liked film's like 1964's Fail-Safe, a movie that almost totally LACKS having any real scenes of action, since roughly 95% of its running time consists of people conversing with each other. But since that dialog between characters is so interesting, and even riveting, at times, Fail-Safe creates a feeling of tension & fear that increasingly grips a viewer to an ever greater degree, as the movie continues on. And when the host of Turner Classic Movies introduced Fail-Safe for its telecast last year, he certainly did not exaggerate as he described the movie's climax as terrifying! But I have to say that people here who've used that word terrifying to describe The Witch in reviews, must be folks who are frightened by their own shadows! Fail-Safe is a 58 year old black & white movie, that at 112 minutes in length, is a full 20 minutes LONGER than The Witch, but manages to maintain an atmosphere of tension & dread, which certainly goes way beyond any similar such elements that Mr Eggers was able to maintain for any substantial portion of his shorter movie. BTW, in Dec. 1973, when William Friedkin's The Exorcist was released in America's movie theaters, I recall that there were numerous news reports of adult men even fainting due to the feelings of dread and terror that the movie filled them with. However, the only way that The Witch will ever cause an adult to pass out, is from it lulling him to sleep, with its snail-like pacing!