How can you take the biggest names in comedy of that period and make an immense film showcasing all their talents and the single funniest character is.... Ethel Merman? The problem is that these are not 'character actors' but major comedians who each live and are funny in their own 'comic universe'. Brought together into a single narrative and a single movie it is leaden.Everyone from Phil Silvers to Jonathan Winters and Sid Caesar are wasted because these are comedians meant to comically DOMINATE their surroundings. The movie itself 'climaxes' in spectacular pandemonium but all the comedians never achieve that comic 'high' one expects of them. It is too long by a good 45 minutes as well. Ethel Merman DID make me laugh.

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is far and above the most entertaining movie I have ever seen in my life. It's non-stop comedy from start to finish, from Jimmy Durante literally kicking the bucket to Ethel Merman slipping on a banana peel. It also has a stellar cast, both leading and supporting, with every joker and jester in the business from Milton Berle and Jonathan Winters to Don Knotts and the Three Stooges.The acting is great, the script is great, the laughs come in at a million miles an hour, and after 20+ viewings I'm still picking up on little bits of humor here and there which escaped my notice before. Perhaps the only fault in this movie is lousy continuity from shot to shot but to me all of the little quirks just make this movie more endearing. If I could only ever again watch one movie for the rest of my life this would be the one I would pick.There is humor here for everyone- dialogue, slapstick, farce, you name it. Give it more than just one viewing. I'm glad I did. I was unsure about it at first but it gets better and better every time I watch it. You won't be sorry you watched this film. For Stanley Kramer's first big comedic outing, he knocked it out of the park and also managed to deliver a beautiful satire on greed and the human condition.Only one movie ever can garner a perfect 10/10 rating from me (being my favorite movie, since if a movie is not your favorite, it naturally could be better and thus is not perfect) and this is it.

I just watched this movie in its uninterrupted entirety (intermissions and all) for the first time. Just in case I missed any actual laughs in all my previous viewings, because I always thought this movie was nothing but an overproduced, overblown, overly loud, excuse to pack together as many comedians as possible.Yet, sadly, even under the best conditions, there were still no actual laughs, because this movie is sadly still nothing but an overproduced, overblown, overly loud, excuse to pack together as many comedians as possible.However, when I saw Ethel Merman, I was reminded of another role of hers, in ' Airplane '. The difference is, unlike this movie, that part was only 30 seconds long, and also unlike this movie, that part was absolutely hysterical! And so it occurred to me that had Kramer & company had the foresight to anticipate more from the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker playbook of understated deadpan comedy (Which they only hinted at here with the sweet & subtle cameo by the Three Stooges), then this would have been MUCH different, and MUCH funnier, movie.-Oh, What Might Have Been!But as it is, this mess deserves no more than 4/10, and even that 4 is only because of the impressive pre-CGI stunt work.Otherwise, it's pretty much just a sad waste, of all that talent, and of 3 hours...

Just about every comic actor in the business showed up for this film. It's fun as a kind of period piece, but it doesn't help make this a well constructed film. It centers around a search for buried treasure, but that's about it. Spencer Tracy is the centering factor as his policeman investigates what's going on and then becomes part of the process. Unfortunately, there is mostly a lot of shouting and perpetual motion, but most of the bits aren't all that funny. Everything concludes in an unremarkable way. I've always felt that the comedies of the sixties were rather uninspired (dull would be a better way of putting it). My friends and I liked these movies when we were in junior high, but these things don't really stand the test of time.