Is this the perfect movie? I just watched it for the umpteenth time with my kids. Almost every scene is a delight, with Nicholson’s performance — alternating between world weary cynicism and noble statesmanship — anchoring the middle of the movie. Wonderful small parts by Martin Short, Jim Brown and Natalie Portman, and of course Tom Jones tearing up a Vegas cabaret and then the hills above Lake Tahoe with song. Lukas Haas’s speech at the end of the movie is a masterpiece of comedy that almost makes me want to live in a teepee. This is a filmmaker really having fun so that every time you watch the movie you catch another little detail. I just noticed the aliens carrying off appliances from the stores they destroy.
TBS seems to have decided to remember September 11th with alien invasion and monster movies. Not a bad choice.
Yeah–I loved this film, and every time I catch a snippet on tv, I settle right into its rhythms. My favorite bits involve the aliens running around, with death beams and those translator machines, yelling “Take us to your leaders!” and “We come in peace!”
I have twice now lost a half-formed post about this movie.
So I’ll be fast this time:
1. I agree.
2. It holds up well
3. I wasn’t crazy about it first time around.
4. It’s like It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World where every major actor in the film is killed.
a whole bunch of us on the blog saw this together at a special preview screening at mann’s chinese in l.a. ah, the memories. it was a self-selected audience of burton-fans and i remember the pre-credits cows on fire sequence bringing the house down.
i loved it when i first saw it and i love it now. though to be truly appreciated it has to be seen on a double bill with independence day.
No, that’s ok – Don’t invite me to the fun movie party 13 years ago. I’m sure I’m far too busy to attend – too busy weeping quietly to myself in my S. Pasadena shanty eating Trader Joe’s chocolate covered caramel corn.
i couldn’t come either. thanks for thinking of me, though.
gio, you were not invited.
mark, there, there. we made up for it by taking you with us to see the kids in the hall movie and telling you when to laugh.
Who is killed in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World? Don’t they all end up in the hospital with Spencer Tracy?
I meant the difference between Mars Attacks and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is that all of the characters die in Mars Attacks.
I’m pretty sure that Phil Silvers dies off-screen when he drives his car into the river though…
oh, right.