Some like it a lot

Rating: 9/10 (30 January 2017)

For the most part, I enjoyed this very unusual farce. Casting two men who made themselves up as women in order to escape the wrath of a murderous Chicago gang was a clever plot idea. The incorporation of the historic St. Valentine's Day gangland massacre into the screenplay provides some diversion from the business of trying to continue fooling people into believing that Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are women. Tony and Jack are the principal comedy team. We have 2 other actors: Marilyn Monroe and Joe E. Brown, who are principally strait men for the comedians. The members of 2 gang also serve, to a limited extent, as straight men.
The casting was near perfect. Tony and Jack made a great comedy team, and were made up to look like women about as well as possible. The main problems were their manner of walking and their voices, which should have given them away as men. This is a major weakness of the screen play: perhaps fatal if that bothers you too much. Sadly, much of stage and film humor relies on victims who are unusually nonobservant, clumsy or stupid. This reduces the comedic value. Implausible happenings and connections between scenes are frequent in this film. Again, too many of such reduces the comedic value of the film. However, as in this film, this significant negative can often be compensated for by sufficient truly funny happenings. Also, children are no doubt generally less bothered by implausible happenings, judging by the popularity of animations.
The scene where various members of the female band gradually squeeze into Jack's(as female)train berth because he has some bootleg liquor reminds me of the famous scene in The Marx Brothers' "A Night at the Opera", where more and more people have a reason to squeeze into their tiny hotel room, falling and climbing all over each other, until the last one opens the door and half spill out.
In addition to masquerading as a woman, Tony masquerades as a rich sea captain, several times going back and forth between one disguise and the other, primarily for the purpose of seducing Marilyn. Clearly, he is trying to imitate Cary Grant's manner of speaking as the captain, reasonably successfully. This somewhat reminds me of a later film starring Tony: "The Great Imposter", where he successfully masquerades as a number of men in their work.
It's clear from a comment by Joe E. Brown that the title means that some people prefer jazz.
As usual, Marilyn plays an innocently slutty gold-digger. And, as with so many of her later films, sounds like she was a basket case much of the time, showing up very late or not at all, forgetting her lines, crying and complaining. The director had to put up with these distractions because the public still loved her.