Amazon.com Essentials:
Maybe "nobody's perfect," as one character in this masterpiece
suggests. But some movies are perfect, and Some Like It Hot is
one of them. In Chicago, during the Prohibition era, two skirt-chasing
musicians, Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon), inadvertently
witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. In order to escape the wrath
of gangland chief Spats Colombo (George Raft), the boys, in drag, join
an all-woman band headed for Florida. They vie for the attention of
the lead singer, Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), a much-disappointed
songbird who warbles "I'm Through with Love" but remains vulnerable to
yet another unreliable saxophone player. (When Curtis courts her
without his dress, he adopts the voice of Cary Grant--a spot-on
impersonation.) The script by director Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond
is beautifully measured; everything works, like a flawless
clock. Aspiring screenwriters would be well advised to throw away the
how-to books and simply study this film. The bulk of the slapstick is
handled by an unhinged Lemmon and the razor-sharp Joe E. Brown, who
plays a horny retiree smitten by Jerry's feminine charms. For all the
gags, the film is also wonderfully romantic, as Wilder indulges in
just the right amounts of moonlight and the lilting melody of "Park
Avenue Fantasy." Some Like It Hot is so delightfully fizzy,
it's hard to believe the shooting of the film was a headache, with an
unhappy Monroe on her worst behavior. The results, however, are
sublime. --Robert Horton
