AFI's Choice As Best All Time Comedy

Rating: 9/10 (14 July 2007)

This film deserves all the kudos it has received from AFI. It is one extremely entertaining film. It has a very talented cast & Billy Wilder is brilliant in making another screwball comedy which is what his career is composed of.
Jack Lemmon & Tony Curtis team up as a couple band members who accidentally witness the St Valentines Day Massacre in Chicago, & then go in drag as women band members to Florida trying to escape the mob folks trying to kill them because they did see the murder. That is the set up.
On the way to Florida on a train, Curtis woman character falls in love with a woman singer in the band played by Marilyn Monroe. This film is one of her better efforts & no doubt the best turn at comedy she tried. Curtis then sets up Marilyn on a date with his alter ego, Curtis doing an impressive imitation of Cary Grant.
Meanwhile, Lemmon has a problem as Joe E Brown, an exotic millionaire, has fallen for her (him). The films closing is a riot involving this plot line.
That set up for this film seems quite simple, but when you watch it you realize how difficult it was to set up & how talented the cast is. I think it can still be enjoyed by viewers, even now. This film is not the first to involve men dressing as women for comic effects. Charlie Chaplin did it in a short before 1920. It is the best film to use it to comic effect though honorable mention should be made to Tootsie & Mrs. Doubtfire in this category.
This one is better because the script works so well than nothing about it seems absurd or abnormal. There are moments in Tootsie & Mrs. Doubtfire which get a little too absurd.