Some Like It Hot

Directed by Billy Wilder, Some Like It Hot follows prohibition-era musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) as they’re forced to go on the run after witnessing a gangland hit – with the pair eventually disguising themselves as women and joining an all-female band (where they meet Marilyn Monroe’s Sugar). Filmmaker Wilder, working from a script written with I.A.L. Diamond, delivers a slow-moving yet mostly engrossing comedy that improves substantially once Curtis and Lemmon’s characters adopt their feminine alter egos (ie the movie’s mob-focused opening stretch isn’t exactly enthralling), with the picture ultimately benefiting from a fun, briskly-paced midsection that’s bursting with amusing sequences and subplots. It’s clear, certainly, that the three central performances play a key role in confirming Some Like It Hot’s obvious success, as Curtis, Lemmon, and Monroe deliver compelling, charismatic work that effectively smooths over the bumps in the narrative (although Lemmon, as good as ever here, finally does walk away with the title of MVP). And although many of the jokes and gags simply aren’t as laugh-out-loud funny as they presumably once were, Some Like It Hot nevertheless comes off as a superior piece of work that lives up to its place as one of Billy Wilder’s very best films.

***1/2 out of ****