Movie Review: The Great Race (1965)

The movie stars Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Peter Falk and Vivian Vance.

I came across this film on one of my movie channels a couple months ago and, because I had heard of it but had never actually watched it, decided to record it. However, since it is a relatively long movie (about 2 ½ hours), I didn’t get around to watching it right away; partly because I was hoping my family would watch it with me.

Realizing it was way too long to be a family movie (my kids would never sit that long), I finally ended up watching it by myself. And, overall, I have to say this movie was pretty decent.

One thing that really surprised me about this movie was it wasn’t as predictable as I first thought it would be. This is because of the number of twists that are thrown in ranging from a town refusing to provide gas to the racers unless they stayed for a party to foreign rebels using Professor Fate (Lemmon) as a stand-in for the prince they were trying to overthrow, a situation that ultimately leads to a giant pie fight. In addition to keeping the movie from being predictable, this also kept it from becoming boring.

Also helping this movie was Professor Fate himself. Movies like this are only as good as their bad guy and, in this particular case, Lemmon did a fantastic job. The character had plenty of motivation for hating his rival, Leslie Gallant III (Curtis), who I personally thought was kind of a jerk. But, at the same time, he wasn’t very likable, making it fun to watch his cheating schemes fail miserably. And, Peter Falk as his henchman, Max Meen, only made his scenes even funnier.

I also found I liked Natalie Wood’s character, Maggie. While she does soften up a bit by the end of the movie, I like the spunk she shows early on, willing to outsmart the men as needed to make sure she stayed in the race. Probably my only real complaint about her is it would have been nice to see her continue in her own car and be a legitimate contender until the end, something I was disappointed to see wasn’t the case.

It’s longer than your average comedy but, if you have the time to watch it, it is worth doing so. I had some doubts at first, but loved every minute of this film and would highly recommend it as a result of that.

My Grade: A