It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
1963  NR  COMEDY  2h 41min
CAST— Spencer Tracy, Edie Adams, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Dorothy Provine, Phil Silvers, Jonathan Winters, Peter Falk, Jimmy Durante, Terry-Thomas, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, William Demarest
MUSIC— Ernest Gold  DIRECTOR— Stanley Kramer

     It certainly is. A super-comedy delivered by a super-cast led by top comedic talent and smattered with a gaggle of guest stars, too many to count. To begin at the beginning: a motley assortment of characters see a man drive off a cliff and plummet to his doom. They race to the man just as he makes a dying confession: there is $350,000 buried in a public park under a big “W” just waiting for the taking. Soon it’s a free-for-all race to recover the loot; they just have to try not to kill each other before they get there. Try to keep up with these many faces as they scramble two hundred miles across California by any means necessary. It’s non-stop laughs from the bucket kick to the banana slip in this comedy to end all comedies. Oscar-winner for Best Sound Editing. Extended version also available.
OUR RATING— *** ½