Critics reviews

Bigness does not usually equal greatness. It does, however, in the case of Kramer's gargantuan comedy. It may not be the "comedy to end all comedies" that some of its cultists claim (and why would we want to end all comedies anyway?) but it certainly is an unparalleled achievement; and its vulgar vastness can only really be appreciated on a huge screen.

Boy, Kramer must have been craving a comedy for some time. A break in a run of moralistic "message films," Mad World is a cathartic burst of rib-damaging mania. The premise, simple: an expanding caravan of everyday folk hotly pursue a treasure buried under a "big W.

Presumably meant to anchor the silliness in William and Tania Rose's script is a police captain monitoring the frenetic dash from his headquarters, played by a frail-looking Spencer Tracy in his next-to-last film. For the first two acts, it's a pedestrian part dominated by sitcom-style family squabbles conducted on the phone, but once Tracy swoops in to deceive the treasure hunters, the film kicks into a high-gear climax that features some of its most spectacular stunts and effects...

Mad World" doesn't lack ambition. Never have so many worked so hard for so few laughs... Winters aside, the resident force of nature is Ethel Merman. She doesn't sing, but her pipes get a workout in what could be the noisiest movie made before Michael Bay's "Armageddon.

The notion of an epic comedy seems oxymoronic—comedies tend to be fleet and compact, opting to leave the viewer wanting more rather than risk overextending an initially hilarious concept until it loses its punch. ("If it bends, it's funny. If it breaks, it's not funny." —Alan Alda, Crimes And Misdemeanors.) It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, however, doesn't know from restraint, starting with the repetition in its title.

In outline, [Kramer's] big, broad stab at slapstick comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is about the ravaging effects of greed, but it's also designed to be monumentally frivolous—a Borscht Belt epic that lets such blood-vessel-bursting comic icons as Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett, Jonathan Winters, and Sid Caesar run roughshod over a thinly scripted treasure-hunt narrative.