Curator Watchlist
A big, bright, meticulously staged slapstick adventure that turns a globe-trotting race into a showcase for elaborate gags, costume comedy, and cartoonish rivalries. Its length and broad style may feel excessive to some, but the commitment to absurdity, production design, and comic timing makes it a standout if you… Read more
Where to watch: Buy
Thu · 2h 40m
Director: Blake Edwards
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood
Professional daredevil and white-suited hero, The Great Leslie, convinces turn-of-the-century auto makers that a race from New York to Paris (westward across America, the Bering Straight and Russia) will help to promote automobile sales. Leslie's arch-rival, the mustached and black-attired Professor Fate vows to beat Leslie to the finish line in a car of Fate's own invention.
Blake Edwards
Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood
A big, bright, meticulously staged slapstick adventure that turns a globe-trotting race into a showcase for elaborate gags, costume comedy, and cartoonish rivalries. Its length and broad style may feel excessive to some, but the commitment to absurdity, production design, and comic timing makes it a standout if you like old-school studio spectacle.
The Great Race is one of those maximalist studio comedies that seems determined to outdo itself every few minutes. Blake Edwards builds the film like a live-action cartoon, with elaborate set pieces, outrageous vehicles, and a parade of sight gags that keep escalating until the whole thing feels gleefully unhinged.
What makes it work is the total commitment. Jack Lemmon’s villain is gloriously ridiculous, Tony Curtis plays the square-jawed hero with a wink, and Natalie Wood gives the film a sharp, stylish counterweight. The movie is less interested in realism than in comic momentum, and it has the confidence to keep stretching that joke for nearly two and a half hours.
It can be overstuffed, and its broadness won’t land for everyone, but the craftsmanship is undeniable. If you want a big Technicolor-era comedy that treats absurdity as an art form, this is a very easy recommendation.
Patrick Willems (4★) · 467 likes
Jack Lemmon has a foot-long mustache, Peter Falk as a sidekick, wears a dracula cape, and drives a car on hydraulic stilts. Every other movie needs to get on this level
eely (3.5★) · 337 likes
this is a PSA to let everyone know how wholeheartedly I support evil gay couple jack lemmon and peter falk in their diabolical transformer car named hannibal (of all things) on their quest to defeat shiny bisexual tony curtis in the most cockamamie race around the world in history (with perpetual third wheel miss trilingual suffragette lady reporter natalie wood)
theriverjordan (5★) · 220 likes
“The Great Race” is the most expensive-looking bimbo to ever show its face in celluloid. With a budget that ballooned the film into the costliest comedy yet made, the money to buy its moronic antics is on full display in the movie’s imagined adaption of the famed 1908 New York to Paris race. Turn of the century costumes by Edith Head, a fleet of custom vintage automobiles, a prop list of contraptions to make Wiley E. Coyote blush — director… more
robbie (3★) · 131 likes
jack and peter should have kissed at the end PERIOD!
phoebe 💫 (4.5★) · 118 likes
My enjoyment scale is SO MAXED right now!! I love lady journalist Natalie Wood spouting feminism in her amazing little outfits and smoking cigars and I love baby Peter Falk and I love the pie fight scene!!
Shares the same playful, high-style comic energy and a taste for elaborate visual gags.
A sprawling, expensive comedy built on escalation, chaos, and ensemble mayhem.
Another period race comedy that mixes spectacle, eccentric characters, and broad physical humor.
For viewers who enjoy period competition, stunt spectacle, and old-fashioned showmanship.
Blake Edwards at his most elastic and gag-driven, with a similar love of comic catastrophe.
A sharp, stylish comedy that pairs farce with impeccable physical timing.
A classic of elaborate comic invention and quicksilver slapstick performance.
Broad ensemble comedy with escalating misunderstandings and a big studio-comedy feel.
For its outrageous, boundary-pushing comic energy and commitment to absurdity.
A breezy, competition-centered comedy with vintage charm and cartoonish momentum.
A light, old-fashioned adventure-comedy with a similar family-friendly studio polish.
A stylish farce built around mistaken identity, comic timing, and escalating absurdity.
slapstick comedy, rivalry, race and competition, period adventure, camp, physical humor, gender politics, romantic farce
slapstick, camp, period comedy, road race, physical gags, ensemble farce, Technicolor, costume design, adventure comedy, 1960s