Some Like It Hot review

Rating: 10/10 (27 November 2003)

What a great cinematic experience it is to view Some Like It Hot. The movie provides you with a bit of everything from madcap action, screwball comedy, mob drama, and campy romance, along with a little sugar on top in sweet sensation, Marilyn Monroe. Despite the apparent weight-gain she looks visually stunning, and her close-to-home performance is worth noting as well. There are many subtexts that lie in Billy Wilder's masterpiece, including one that could very well do with Marilyn's character Sugar Kane Kowalczyk. Much like Marilyn, the lounge singing Sugar is searching for love with a decent somebody other than the player-type she often frequents (in the film's case, saxophonists). Perhaps men found this sultry misses too intimidating, making Marilyn's love-life in the real world just the same.

Another suggestive undertone could do with the abundant `crisis of masculinity' shot off in the late 1950's. Two middling male musicians (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon), all dragged out, seem to be granted opportunities they would never have had if remained as `men' (i.e. marrying a millionaire, accepting free trips and consolations, etc.). Is it femininity that gains all? Like Dustin Hoffman's Tootsie, it is apparent these `beauties' really weren't beauties at all; bosses-the mob and Sugar's-pick it up right away. Why the feminine gain? Do men make wiser women than younger girls?
All rhetoric aside, Some Like It Hot's concept is a lot simpler: the men join an all girls band heading to Florida, evading the possibilities of being found as the witnesses to a gangland rubout (a.k.a. the St. Valentine's Day Massacre). Of course there are many complications for these `women' along the way, including their intense magnetism towards Sugar. Never is there a dull moment in Some Like It Hot, with quickly paced classical cutting, a wholesome variety of locations, and a brilliant screenplay much to the allure of Wilder's other treasure Sunset Boulevard. Not many movies over 40 years can hold up the laughter presented in Hot. In one of the funnier scenes, a relentless drunkard in the midst of a `funeral parlor' seize-up demands more scotch-filled decaf: `How bout another cup of coffee!' Classic, indeed.

5/5 stars