It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
Director: Stanley Kramer
Year Released: 1963
Rating: 2.0
After Jimmy Durante launches his car off a highway and is close to dyin' on a pile of rocks, he tells people who came to help him - Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Jonathan Winters, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, etc. - where $350,000 is buried, which sets off a frantic car chase to dig up the loot; following their every sighting is Capt. Culpeper (Spencer Tracy), who has a plan of his own. It's not a bad movie - the cast is too stacked for it to be a waste of time - and there are tons of cameos (Jerry Lewis running over a hat, the Three Stooges playing firemen, Jack Benny armed with his "... Well," Buster Keaton bein' himself) and loud-and-proud Ethel Merman is there as a verbal punching bag (it even ends on a joke at her expense), but it's also too long for what it is: a not-quite screwball comedy, and once the nostalgia wears off there's little left but recorded franticness. Kramer was mostly known for doing super-serious 'social commentary' movies, so this must have been truly disorienting for him to helm.