[five stars - highest rating]
“THE GREAT AMERICAN COMEDY!
You can see everything from Woody Allen to Seth Rogen in its heroes.
This out-and-out farce... will always be immortal.”
– Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York
Click here to read entire review

#1 - American Film Institute's TOP 100 FUNNIEST MOVIES

“THE ULTIMATE BILLY WILDER FILM!”
– Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

“THE MOST ENTERTAINING CULTURAL SPECTACLE OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS!”
– Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
Click here to read Lane's article on Some Like It Hot

(1959) “You’re a guy. Why should a guy want to marry a guy?” “Security!” Chicago, February 14, 1929, and jazz musicians Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis get a rare look at history in the making: only trouble is, it’s the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, and with kingpin George Raft barking “get those guys!” to his goon squad, it’s time to start looking for that outtatown gig. Problem is, the only open slots are with Sweet Sue and Her All-Girl Society Syncopaters. As if high heels, girdles, and falsies weren’t tsouris enough, “Josephine” and “Daphne” must keep those testosterone levels down while in the sensuous proximity of Marilyn Monroe’s “Sugar” Kane, the band’s sultry Chantootsie (“Look at the way she walks! Like Jello on springs!”), a melancholy baby who’s gotten “the fuzzy end of the lollipop” from a succession of jerk sax players — guess what Curtis plays? It all comes together in a Florida resort where Lemmon’s Daphne does the tango with amorous moneybags Joe E. Brown; Monroe keeps trying to get a rise out of Curtis, in reverse drag as a Cary Grantish yachtsman (the real Grant judied, “I don’t talk like that!”); and Raft and henchman arrive for a gangland convention topped by emperor-pin Nehemiah Persoff’s explosive after-dinner speech. The greatest drag act since Charlie’s Aunt — with the closing line to end all closing lines — proved a box office smash and garnered six Oscar nominations, including Best Director, Actor (Lemmon), and screenplay (Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond), but left Wilder yearning for a nervous breakdown in the wake of Monroe’s endless delays and multiple takes, while wowing unlikely set visitor Satyajit Ray. “Transvestism, impotence, role confusion, and borderline inversion — all hilariously innocent, always on the brink of double-entendre.” – Pauline Kael. “A movie that’s about nothing but sex and yet pretends it’s about crime and greed...When sincere emotion strikes these characters, it blindsides them: Curtis thinks he wants only sex, Monroe thinks she wants only money, and they are as astonished as delighted to find they want only each other.” – Roger Ebert.
AN MGM RELEASE

Listen to author Laurence Maslon (Some Like It Hot: The 50th Anniversary Companion) on WNYC