Good

Rating: 6/10 (21 June 2012)

Some films are terrifically overrated, even if they are solid, enjoyable little films. Perhaps the most glaring example of this dictum is Billy Wilder's 1959 black and white comedy Some Like It Hot. It often appears on Best Of lists as the top comedy of all time, but, while a good, solid film, it is nowhere near a great film, in screen writing, technical measures, nor in, well, laughs per minute. Let's tackle those three things in reverse. Perhaps the funniest film ever made, in terms of laughs per minute is Stanley Kramer's 1963 all star comedy, It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It's a pants-pisser that unleashes 2-3 guffaws per minute. The scene where Jonathan Winters destroys the gas station is priceless. By contrast, Some Like It Hot hasn't a single guffaw in the whole film- a number of moments that make you smile and tee-hee, but guffaw? No. Part of this is because the film has not aged well- it's hard to still laugh at drag jokes nowadays. Also, the film is not even a parody nor satire, like Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb. Then there's Wilder's own significant cache of comedies, the best of which I'd argue is his VASTLY underrated 1966 black and white comedy, The Fortune Cookie, which is far superior to Some Like It Hot, for many reasons, but primarily because, while the films shared Jack Lemmon, The Fortune Cookie had Walter Matthau and no Marilyn Monroe, while Some Like It Hot was burdened with Monroe, and lacked the comically impeccable Matthau. More on the Monroe debacle in a bit.