Mum's Monday: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad world (1963)

#When this film starts someone is in a hurry but he, Jimmy the Crook (Buster Keaton) doesn’t get very far. The cars he has passed all stop, one-character J. Russell Finch (Milton Berle) in particular reacts in a realistic way, when he keeps repeating the fact that the car ‘Went sailing right out there’. All these strangers have been drawn into a situation they are all intrigued to carry out, except one, Emeline Marcus-Finch (Dorothy Provine).

There is a nice cliché to end these scenes and then the police arrive, they ask if Jimmy was still alive when the assembled group found him and if he said anything, the answer given shows good quick thinking in the script.

Who’d have thought one woman, Mrs. Marcus (Ethel Merman) would have so much to talk about, as the film jumps between characters, it is realistic to see them all discuss what they have heard. They are all suspicious of each other, so they stop and try to form an agreement, which if played out would make this film a very short and boring film. After much talk, disagreement and well timed humour, it is now every man/woman for him/herself. So let the crazy fun begin.

Someone doesn’t want to move to California, don’t you just hate it when due to an event a smug someone rubs your nose in it.

All throughout this film the script includes such well-timed humour, the film has now moved on it is the start of vehicles being abandoned and other people being drawn in to help or not as some cases may be.

So much for a new business, I just hope they are sufficiently insured. It is sad to watch but as stories get made up in this film consequences happen.

Just when we think the money will be found by Mrs. Marcus’s son Sylvester (Dick Shawn) the script and the music is worded and created otherwise and no one is to criticise Sylvester. Things take a dark turn, J. Algernon Hawthorne (Terry-Thomas) just wants his car keys back. The charges are mounting up in more ways than one.

Melville Crump (Sid Caesar) and his wife Monica (Edie Adams) maybe the first ones to reach the destination, but they find themselves trapped. First ones there doesn’t mean they are first to find the money.

This film shows you ‘You shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you’, criticising the English to an English man who is helping you out by giving you a lift is not the wisest of things to do.

I agree with not giving an advantage to one set of people over another, but this is a strange situation and maybe the rules shouldn’t apply on this occasion.

This film shows you shouldn’t drink and fly, although this makes for some fun scenes and again well timed humour in the script.

How much dancing can one couple do? Luckily this time Sylvester’s girlfriend (Barrie Chase) hears the phone ring. The script is so well done that the result is, Sylvester is going the other way.

When you are trapped your instinct can be just to get out, there is a question ‘Who is going to pay for the damage? Well the shop keepers did lock them in.

Not just anyone can fly a plane or know the correct call to air traffic control, although ‘Mayday’ and ‘Help’ is a good start though.

This is a fast paced film quickly changing scenes between the character’s situations they find themselves in and this film is getting crazier and crazier, including we now see the annoying predicament of Otto Meyer (Phil Silvers) just wanting to find the road again and all he finds is a river, happy sailing/sinking.

After the intermission there will be only a little hole made in the wall, but the fuse comes across the discharge from the fire extinguisher, but it is what’s in the boxes that are now alight that causes a real problem. It is good how interweaved and connected the things that happen in the script are done.

The comedic silliness continues in this film, including, by picking the unlikeliest person to talk Benjy Benjamin (Buddy Hackett) and Ding Bell (Mickey Rooney) down to land the plane. After an amusing fly-by of the control tower it all seems the odds are against them.

The car scenes on the road between J. Russell Finch and Sylvester are really strange and silly. It needn’t have been included, you could clearly see it had been staged.

The police have been watching over the events in the film and they are about to make their way to come together. So after keeping calm, falling down in an aeroplane, two holes in a wall and a glass window and some paint, they all eventually arrive at the park.

As often can happen the person who is not looking for the ‘Big W’ finds it, it just goes to show if you are in haste you are least likely to see or in this case find anything. Sadly, the dream doesn’t last long though.

The police in the form of Capt. T. G. Culpepper (Spenser Tracy) has the upper hand at first, but the film is not over yet and after a failed escape and a rescue mission by the fire department, that doesn’t end well. This leads to some amusing scenes at the end where we find out the knowledge that the judge will enjoy having Culpepper in the dock and it is also amusing to see the result of a poorly discarded banana peel.

This film goes to show; greed can work in mysterious ways.