The Great Race

Rating:
Summary: the lavish classic comes to DVD!
Review: THE GREAT RACE is a lavishly-filmed comedy on the grandest scale. Director Blake Edwards' unmistakeable touch is all over this sprawling comedy about a long-winded race from New York to Paris, and is highlighted by Henry Mancini's delightful score.

The Great Leslie (Tony Curtis) and Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon) challenge each other to win 'the great race', a foolish flight of fancy that will take them through the Wild West, fighting off polar bears in the Artic and thwarting Royal imposters in Europe.

Coming along for the ride is feisty sufragette Maggie DuBois (Natalie Wood at her loveliest), and Fate's dimwitted assistant Max (Peter Falk). Watch the hopeless quartet as they attempt to win the greatest race of the century - with hilarious results!

Featuring Vivian Vance and Dorothy Provine (as the sexy saloon singer Lily Olay). Henry Mancini's score includes "The Sweetheart Tree" and "He Shouldn't-a, Hadn't-a, Oughn't-a Swang on Me".

The DVD presents the film in a wonderfully clean print, in its 2:35:1 cinema ratio, complete with the Overture, Intermission and Exit Music sequences. The soundtrack has been newly-remastered in dynamic 5.1 from the original session tapes.

The DVD also includes a Making-of featurette and the trailer. (Single-sided, dual-layer disc).

Rating:
Summary: Blake Edwards comedy masterpiece now on WideScreen DVD!!!
Review: Blake Edwards "The Great Race" (1965)(was loosely based on a real 1908 auto race) is 160 minutes of WideScreen (Enhanced for WideScreen TV's) TECHNICOLOR action packed comedy staged in the 1908 world of the automobile race.

The major difference is this race is 20,000 miles in length orignating in New York City to Paris, France. The main characters & arch enemies are "The Great Leslie" (Tony Curtis) dressed always in white, driving the "Leslie Special". This customized automobile is also white!!!. His nemesis rival "Professor Fate" (Jack Lemmon) dressed entirely in black!! His auto is the "Hannible 8" also in black. The love interest & newspaper suffragette (Natalie Wood) provides the balance to this diabolical race.

This movie builds all the characters perfectly & include all of the necessary gimmicks throughout to include; a massive Western barroom brawl, elaborate Royal Ball, swash buckling sword fight, a Royal Prince coupe attempt & a 2357 pie fight to name a few.

The extras include a 45 minute behind the scenes featurette.

The picture 2001 digital transfer & the 5.1 dolby sound are the best there is!!! This movie is a true family film and is one of the all time most lavish, funniest, wildest comedies ever (If not the last from the great Warner Brothers Hollywood productions). The movie even has entrance, intermission and exit music to give the old flavor of the big Hollywood films.

This movie was dedicated to the greatest Hollywood comedy team (30 years together and 105 films) "Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy

Get out the popcorn and sit back & enjoy "The Great Race". Enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: A Big Ole Moose Butt
Review: A classically structured old time villian vs the good guy film, with the obligatory sidekicks and the beautiful love interest, who will eventually succumb to the charms of The hero. More about that later. OK, the stereotypes are there, but that's what the movie was about. Charging from the gate with the player piano, boos and hiss when the cast boards are shown, the movie brings the viewer up to speed very fast with humor and great slapstick. Following a PR auto race in the early days of the 20th century, the film follows the main characters through the landscape of the US and Europe. Sight gags abound and the scenery is often breathtaking. The plot is easy to floow and it's good fun. For the movie fan who doesn't want to disect a movies' every nuance, this is especially fun and worth seeing time and again. The characters will keep you laughing long after the soundtrack has ended,. I would comment more on the plot, but nearly 100 people already handled that - look, just take a chance on it. It's great fun.

Rating:
Summary: Nostalgic Comfort Viewing Perfect for a Family Night
Review: THE GREAT RACE may not be a masterpiece--but it is a perfect choice for a cold and rainy night: stylish, frothy, and often flatly hilarious, it makes for "comfort viewing" at its best.

One of the movie's several charms is that it draws heavily from Victorian cliches that still linger in the public mind, gives them a gentle comic spin, and then drops them into the tale of an early 1900s auto race from New York to Paris by way of Siberia. Add to this a heap of favorite character actors, a big budget, flamboyant period costumes, and the biggest pie fight ever filmed, and you have a movie where there is always something to enjoy on the screen.

The great thing about THE GREAT RACE are the performances, which are very broad but endowed with a sly humor. The comedy accolades here go to Jack Lemmon and Peter Falk as the notorious Dr. Fate and his bumbling sidekick Max--wonderful bits of acting that will have you hooting with laughter in every scene--and Dorothy Provine scores memorably in a cameo as Lily Olay, the bombshell singer who presides over the most rootin'-tootin' saloon this side of the Pecos.

But every one, from Tony Curtis and the lovely Natalie Wood down to such cameo performers as Vivian Vance, get in plenty of comic chops as the film drifts from one outrageous episode to another: suffergettes crowding a newspaper, the biggest western brawl imaginable, polar bears, explosions, daredevil antics, and a subplot lifted from THE PRISONER OF ZENDA agreeably crowd in upon each other. True, the film does seem over-long and may drag a bit in spots, but it never drags for very long, and it's all in good fun--and the production values and memorable score easily tide over the bare spots.

The DVD bonuses aren't anything to write home about, and the film has not been restored per se--the color seems a bit faded here and there--but the print is remarkably clean and the widescreen format is an essential. This would be an excellent selection for a family movie night--or for any evening when you're alone and feeling a bit blue. Break out the popcorn, curl up on you sofa, and... as Dr. Fate would say... "Push the button, Max!"

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: Fate loves ...
Review: Like many of the reviewers, I first saw this great film as a child with my father. We have laughed about it ever since, and my own children also know that "Fate is a fink!" The movie spoofs the old Simon Legree silent movies and combines hilarious slapstick, outrageous sight gags, the historic 1908 New York to Paris automobile race (Remember the Thomas Flyer?), incredible round the world locations, an Old West saloon fight, great old cars and props, priceless performances by Jack Lemmon (sans frozen moustache), Tony Curtis (great swordplay but, alas, no Cary Grant impersonation), Peter Falk (hilarious in goggles) and the exquisite Natalie Wood (under the Sweetheart Tree). And don't forget the sendup of the Prisoner of Zenda with the fantastic Ross Martin who was then also starring as Artemus Gordon in the Wild, Wild West television series with Robert Conrad. The music by Henry Mancini is among his best, and the soundtrack is recently available. Even the opening credits are classic, including the harried projectionist and the audience booing Professor Fate! This could be an awesome widescreen DVD with plenty of saloon fight, sword duel and pie fight outtakes; current interviews with Curtis, Lemmon, and Falk; Blake Edwards commentary;...and please, a few more stills of Natalie Wood!

Rating:
Summary: A lot of fun, but not what it should have been.
Review: Epics were in vogue in the Sixties, and even the early Seventies(although I can't really see a hippie watching any of them), and it was only natural that comedies would get the "big" bug. IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD and THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL make up two of the big three. The other is THE GREAT RACE, Blake Edward's 159 minute slapstick excursion, restored on DVD in complete roadshow fashion, with overture, intermission, entr'acte, and exit music. And yet, for a film of this type, it is less about the race than about the rivalry between Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon) and the Great Leslie (Tony Curtis). There is precious little racing, and though the film is far from boring and has much going for it (the finale to Part One is brilliant) one can't help but wonder what it would have been like if the other entries in the race regrouped after being snuffed out and made their mad dashes for the forefront. That would make it THE GREAT RACE. Also, the lack of other challenge leaves a depressing side effect; the film seems mildly unfinished and undernourished, like 2 hours and 40 minutes of a 3 plus hour movie. And yet, the film has so much going for it that to ignore it is rather unfair. What there is (I should note that due to the previously noted flaws, the chapters on the disc make it a more pleasing experience) is very well made, and one can appreciate what they put into it.

If only they put more.

Jamie Teller

Rating:
Summary: Nostalgic Comfort Viewing Perfect for a Family Night
Review: THE GREAT RACE may not be a masterpiece--but it is a perfect choice for a cold and rainy night: stylish, frothy, and often flatly hilarious, it makes for "comfort viewing" at its best.

One of the movie's several charms is that it draws heavily from Victorian cliches that still linger in the public mind, gives them a gentle comic spin, and then drops them into the tale of an early 1900s auto race from New York to Paris by way of Siberia. Add to this a heap of favorite character actors, a big budget, flamboyant period costumes, and the biggest pie fight ever filmed, and you have a movie where there is always something to enjoy on the screen.

The great thing about THE GREAT RACE are the performances, which are very broad but endowed with a sly humor. The comedy accolades here go to Jack Lemmon and Peter Falk as the notorious Dr. Fate and his bumbling sidekick Max--wonderful bits of acting that will have you hooting with laughter in every scene--and Dorothy Provine scores memorably in a cameo as Lily Olay, the bombshell singer who presides over the most rootin'-tootin' saloon this side of the Pecos.

But every one, from Tony Curtis and the lovely Natalie Wood down to such cameo performers as Vivian Vance, get in plenty of comic chops as the film drifts from one outrageous episode to another: suffergettes crowding a newspaper, the biggest western brawl imaginable, polar bears, explosions, daredevil antics, and a subplot lifted from THE PRISONER OF ZENDA agreeably crowd in upon each other. True, the film does seem over-long and may drag a bit in spots, but it never drags for very long, and it's all in good fun--and the production values and memorable score easily tide over the bare spots.

The DVD bonuses aren't anything to write home about, and the film has not been restored per se--the color seems a bit faded here and there--but the print is remarkably clean and the widescreen format is an essential. This would be an excellent selection for a family movie night--or for any evening when you're alone and feeling a bit blue. Break out the popcorn, curl up on you sofa, and... as Dr. Fate would say... "Push the button, Max!"

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: DVD version is fullscreen not widescreen
Review: The movie is spectacular. This DVD version is a bomb. Shame on Warner Brothers for their greediness and lack of effort to bring widescreen versions to the masses including updated soundtracks and clean film reels!

Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: The race of "The Great Race" is nothing more than a clotheslines for hanging a magnificent series of set pieces in many filmatic styles. A mixture of early twentieth century daredevil thrill work combined with slapstick early in the movie gives the erroneous impression that it's what the movie's about. Some viewers who don't like that sort of Wile E. Coyote doings tune the movie off at that point. Others, who want it to continue throughout the movie, become bored. In fact, comedy is hard to sustain, so working the movie out through largely self-contained episodes was probably a good idea. The slapstick sections give way to a lighthearted western romp with a notable saloon brawl, then to an interlude on an ice floe that strengthens the bonds between the characters and allows character development that was impossible thus far, and finally to a subtle and mature adventure story largely based on "The Prisoner of Zenda". The controversial "Zenda" spoof dominates the second act (after the intermission). Some see the Pottsdorf segment as a huge mistake, while others view it as the point which the first act inextricably led. The culminating pie fight of this episode, the largest in history (and not particularly funny in itself, though it does provide more character development), gives some credence to the latter school. Perhaps Edwards created the whole segment, the whole movie, to give us the pie fight. The whole "Prisoner of Zenda" spoof is itself a remarkable achievement. The episodic quality of the movie made "The Great Race" one of the movies that worked best back in the 1960s and 70s when networks broke it up and aired it over two nights in prime time (as they used to do very long movies). And along the way "The Great Race" sends up many more topics, some of which, like suffragettes, are sacrosanct today.

What "The Great Race" is not, is a gag-a-minute clone of "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines". The race is important only as a McGuffin to get the action rolling and bring the characters together for their mutual interests. "The Great Race" is a clinic on various types of movie genres -- slapstick, western, adventure -- that were antiquated by the mid sixties (a time when most moviegoers probably had a nostalgia for those types of movies, which they'd have seen as children). "The Great Race" not funny in the way 1990's and 2000's movies are, with the unearthly wildness of Robin Williams and Jim Carrey or the "if-this-laugh-doesn't-work-another's-coming" approach of Abrahams and Zucker and the Farrelly brothers. Rather, the comedy is is the lighthearted approach to the various subjects introduced (though there are plenty of wisecracks to go around). The only problem is that, along the way in the "Prisoner of Zenda" spoof, Blake Edwards seemed to have forgotten he was making a comedy. Even that does not particularly detract from the movie as a whole, as Max (Peter Falk) comes into his own in this segment and Tony Curtis' "Great Leslie" proves he's more than just a pretty face, but will put his life on the line for Right with a dueling scene foreshadowed much earlier.

And there are two -- count 'em, two -- places where the movie pauses for a breather to give a fine Mancini/Mercer song. Mancini may be the best movie composer ever; certainly his incidental music is wonderful throughout this movie.

The cast makes the movie hit on all cylinders. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, reteamed a few years after their comedy success "Some Like it Hot", fully understand their roles and play them to the hilt (Lemmon's Fate is quickly tiresome, but since Lemmon has the duel role in the "Zenda" spoof he must work hard to differentiate the characters). Natalie Wood is refreshing and brings excitement to every segment she's in. Along the race route, some excellent supporting players make cameos: Arthur O'Connell, Vivian Vance, Marvin Kaplan (New York); Larry Storch, Denver Pyle, Hal Smith, Dorothy Provine (Boracho); Ross Martin (Pottsdorf). And, as the sidekicks of Leslie and Fate (respectively) Keenan Wynn and Peter Falk couldn't have been better chosen for their parts. Falk, whose part at first looks small and unrewarding, becomes one of the funniest characters in the movie; while Wynn's character, mostly buried in blustering, provides one of the biggest (and necessary at that point) laughs in the movie. And director Blake Edwards, just coming off "The Pink Panther" and "A Shot in the Dark", is at the pinnacle of his career.

If you haven't seen this movie in widescreen, you've never seen this movie. Repeated television showings have cropped fully a third of the movie by taking away both ends of the screen. To be fully appreciated, "The Great Race" requires viewing on the canvas Blake Edwards envisioned for it. The DVD is remarkably well done, with vibrant colors (Natalie Wood's wardrobe is one of the finest things in the movie), and the whole shebang looks good as new. The sound effects (for which, believe it or not, the movie won an Oscar) were given a good brush up and sound great. Extras for the DVD release are so disappointing they're barely worth mentioning; except to say that the original trailer is one of the worst I've ever seen. An audio track with Blake Edwards and Tony Curtis would've been welcome, and maybe a comment or two by Peter Falk if he'd do it.

All in all, "The Great Race" is a superb movie, with the caveat that it must be taken for what it is, rather than judged by what it's not.

Rating:
Summary: "The Great Race" is Great Sh*t
Review: I am not a man of comedy. More specifically, I don't often enjoy comedy because I don't find the jokes in movies to be funny. I generally stay away from comedies for this reason, as well as the fact that I find enough comedy in the world around me.

"The Great Race" was the funniest movie I've seen since "My Blue Heaven" with Steve Martin. This isn't a movie to be taken seriously whatsoever, as the plot is rather basic, but Jack Lemmon is an amazing actor, playing two eccentric characters in the film.

Some of the wackiest, most "out there" humor I've seen, "Monty Python & the Holy Grail" included. This film is saturday morning cartoons come to life.