Old Movies with Kids: It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

To continue my kids' education in old movies, over the weekend we watched It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I remember really liking this movie as a kid, but I hadn't seen it since then so I was excited to revisit it with my own kids.

Unfortunately, it wasn't as great as I remember. Some parts were a bit too slow and dragged on too long, but there was plenty of silliness and I think the kids enjoyed it.

The premise of the movie is pretty simple--a man gets into a serious car accident and as he's dying, he reveals to a group of strangers who came to his rescue that he buried $350k under a big W. What follows is 2-and-a-half hours of mishaps involving various modes of transportation and slightly mentally unstable people in often physically impossible situations as they all race to find the mysterious big W.

The number of cars running into things in this movie rivals any modern action movie.

This movie is part of a fad in the '60's and '70's that involved making movies featuring slightly washed-up A-list and B-list actors who must each require a certain amount of screen time because all of these movies are super long and I can't imagine any other reason that they need to be so long. This is a long movie, especially since it's basically the same gag over and over.

Surprisingly, my kids didn't complain once. They seemed to like it and got a kick out of some of the slapstick.

As a side note, if you don't want to sit through the whole movie, this Simpsons episode basically accomplishes the same effect in about 2 minutes.

From the Kids

"Good. Weird. Funny." - 10 year old girl

"Good" - 5 year old girl

"I hated everything, but I kinda liked it." - 8 year old boy

Kid's favorite moments:

When Jimmy Durante literally kicked the bucket. They were all very happy to learn this new phrase and have continued to laugh about it.

When everyone's freaking out when they landed the airplane at the airport.

The people trapped in the basement.

The mother in law.

When they all failed to notice the W.