Not the funniest film ever made, but essential viewing

Rating: 7/10 (2 December 2005)

The first time I saw "Some Like it Hot" as a teenager I didn't really like it very much. It was one of my father's favorite films but after he watched it again with me even he claimed he found it to be quite disappointing, and that he had "remembered it being funnier." I know the whole genre-swapping thing was risqué in 1959 and I appreciate the layers of the film - all the sexual references (such as Tony Curtis' pointed foot during his scene with Marilyn Monroe as a pretty obvious sight gag) and other stuff that goes on. However I couldn't help but find my overall reaction somewhat mixed. Viewing it again a few years later I found it to be a bit more enjoyable, but I still would not call it the greatest comedy of all-time.
In my opinion Wilder's other collaboration with Jack Lemmon, a similarly ahead-of-its time and racy film called "The Apartment" (released a year later), is superior to "Some Like It Hot." But this one seems to receive even more critical attention than Wilder and Lemmon's other film and I believe it was voted by the AFI as the second funniest film of all time (with "Tootsie" at number one).
The performances cannot be faulted. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis are both very good and Curtis' classic Cary Grant impersonation has become something of a film legend. Monroe isn't the best actress in the world (and it's certainly not as good a performance as she gave in "The Misfits" a couple years later) but she's basically there to look pretty and be bubbly, and that works well.
Overall I'd say this comedy works rather well for the first forty minutes, but like many body-swapping comedies of today, once the ideas run out it kind of gets old fast. The Cary Grant impersonation and Lemmon's hilarious (and rather disturbing) romance with a rich man whilst dressed up as a woman both add a bit of flair to the plot, but in the end I'd say I find it to be more fondly remembered than it perhaps deserves to be - but that's just me.