Review of The Great Race (1965) by Justin H — 16 Apr 2009

I've always thought that live action cartoons are a medium to respect. It can't be easy to reproduce the lunacy of Loony Tunes with actors, so when a film gets it right I'm generally awed. The Great Race most definitely gets it right, pitching clean-cut hero The Great Leslie (Tony Curtis) against dastardly Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon) in a race from New York to Paris. Along the way Fate cheats, connives and contrives to thwart his (more popular) adversary, and the way he goes about this is a constant joy to watch. I'd even say that the best part of the film is the stuff before the race, when we concentrate on Fate's day-to-day attempts to ruin Leslie's career. They all fail, of course, because this is really a cartoon.

With a great sense of slapstick (courtesy of director Blake Edwards, who's used to this sort of thing) and a fantastic villain, The Great Race would seem to have the makings of a comedy classic. But it falls naggingly short, for one reason that will be completely obvious to anyone who watches it: it's too long.

I'd frankly question any film that comes in at two and half hours long, but The Great Race is a sublimely simple live-action cartoon. Of all films, why should this one need to be so long? There's a lot of waffle and plenty of tangents, because the film doesn't have much of a core plot. And while a chaotic story can be fun over a short stretch - again, see any classic Tom & Jerry or Bugs Bunny outing for proof - it's simply not something that's compatible with vast, indulgent runtimes. Complete with an overture, intermission and exit music, it doesn't matter how sprightly The Great Race can be in short bursts: the full film is punishing.

Still, when it's good, it's very good, mostly because of Jack Lemmon. As the dastardly Professor Fate, a daredevil determined to stop his rival, The Great Leslie, Lemmon steals every scene he's in. Dressed in archetypal villain attire (top hat, moustache, a permanently curled eyebrow), Lemmon throws himself into the role, and there is scarcely a moment with him on screen that is not completely wonderful. He has a nice rapport with his lackey, Max (Peter Falk), and his scenes are the best.

Less good is Tony Curtis. While there is a kind of cartoon sensibility about Leslie - random women throw themselves into his arms, and his teeth flash when he smiles - he's just too dull to draw our attention away from Lemmon. There's nothing particularly "good" about him, either, and at no point in the film does he feel like the main character. (Lamentably, there doesn't seem to be one at all.) His romance with determined feminist Maggie (Nathalie Wood) doesn't spark a lot of interest for this reason, and she's so damnably precocious that she's constantly irritating. The whole subplot about women's rights is kind of funny, but it only feels as relevant as the film's other diversions and sub-plots - which is to say, not very.

Although scatterbrained and padded, it's important to focus on what works about The Great Race. It's very funny, (occasionally) very well made, and Jack Lemmon is magnificent. It's just a shame the film's attention span is so all over the place, and the script so full of slack, that you might lose sight of the good bits. After all, simply being two and half hours long shouldn't automatically mean that it's a slow or padded story; on the other hand, maybe it's impossible to sustain characters as vibrant but cartoony as Professor Fate over such a hefty runtime, which leads me to wonder why they tried.