The Great Race redux

As part of Natalie Wood's day in TCM"S Summer Under the Stars, this week's Essentials Jr. selection is The Great Race, at 8:00 PM tonight. I reviewed the movie here back in July 2010, and as you can tell, I had some serious problems with the movie.

That having been said, I can see why somebody else might think it's an interesting selection for any sort of "classic movies for kids" programming. The situations are absurd, and the humor is almost cartoonish in nature. This is especially true with the visual humor. The scene, for example, of the racers stuck on the iceberg, is particularly the sort of thing you can imagine being in a cartoon. The pie fight also fits in well with the sort of scenes of plans backfiring on Tom going after Jerry, or Wile E. Coyote's failed Acme schemes.. If memory serves -- and I have to admit that I haven't bothered to watch the movie since I blogged about it -- it's not as if there's anything particularly objectionable in the movie either. At least, no more objectionable than the old studio-era cartoons.

Of course, the movie still has problems, with the chief one being the long running time. I think a lot of kids, especially the younger ones, are going to have trouble with the over two and a half hour running time. Will they get to Paris already? I also think that my criticisms from 2010 are still going to hold. Although there are going to be people who like this movie, I doubt I'm alone in finding The Great Race tiresome.

I suppose it's too bad if TCM couldn't get the rights to run The Ghost and Mrs. Muir for an Essentials Jr. movie with Natalie Wood.