In perhaps one of the greatest forerunners of the madcap-misadventure genre, 1963’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (wait…yeah, okay, four Mads), several strangers race one another to a supposedly huge sum of buried money. After witnessing a man’s fatal car crash (he drove off a cliff, naturally), four cars of people learn, in his dying words, of $350,000 buried on the beach of Santa Rosita underneath a “W” sign. Well, that should be easy to find! Thanks to some of the best-loved actors of the time (Mickey Rooney, Ethel Merman, Spencer Tracy and Buddy Hackett), plus the directorial chops of Stanley Kramer, this 175-minute film feels very unlike a long, long, long, long movie.
Wed., June 24, 7:30 p.m., 2009
