Some Like It Hot

Film, 1959, dir. Billy Wilder

Random Bonus Review not mentioned in recent check-in!

AFI named this movie the funniest of all movies of the 1900's.  Let me go ahead and say off the bat that you will not laugh harder at this movie than you did at whatever your current favorite comedy is.  That being said, it's a fun little movie and a "classic" that you probably ought to have seen.  (Actually, it's not really a "little" movie--more on that later.)

It's about these two musicians, Joe and Jerry, who witness a brutal gang killing (seemingly the St. Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago) and need to run away so they don't get taken out too.  The only gig they can get at the last minute, though, is with an all-girl band.  So of course they dress up in drag, go by Josephine and Daphne, and get the heck out of Dodge.  They meet Sugar, the band's singer (slash ukelele player?), and Joe tries to win her heart in a complicated clothes-and-gender-switcheroo plot line that rivals Mrs. Doubtfire in quick-change dexterity.  Meanwhile, Jerry/Daphne buddies up with all the girls and ends up showing an old millionaire a good time.  Hilarity ensues, as well as a chase scene when the mobsters of course catch up with the band.

Joe and Jerry deciding how to portray women is what makes this movie funny.  I can't help but imagine that if the movie were made today as a screwball comedy, there would be a lot of gay jokes and unfunny stereotypes about women.  This movie manages to stay away from that, and it's funny because of the characters that they create.  Then there's the lovely Marilyn Monroe as Sugar, who gets some laughs here and there for her antics in trying to find a rich husband (which, of course, Joe is trying to portray).  She won a Golden Globe for her performance (as did the film itself for Best Comedy and Jack Lemmon as Jerry for Best Actor), and she is certainly magnetic on screen.

A few minor issues.  One, it's too long, as I alluded to in the opening paragraph of this review.  The amount of time it takes to set up the whole gangster plot at the beginning is disproportionately long.  Two, looking back from the future as we are, there is something uncomfortable about watching Marilyn be the dumb blonde without any apology.  She calls herself "not too smart" several times in the film for allowing herself to be drawn into affairs with no-good men, and dreams of a rich man to take her away to her dream life of luxury.  Oh, Marilyn.  I just want more out of my female icons sometimes.  But, she is beautiful and luminous and we manage to love her anyway.  Wilder certainly doesn't have any compunctions about showing off her assets with the costume choices, either.

Here is a longer and smarter take on the whole thing by Roger Ebert.  Try to ignore the fact that he talks about Monroe's breasts in detail, but otherwise a good read.  As he points out at the end of his review, you've got to watch this movie if you don't know the last line.  It's a classic.