Some Like it Hot . Austin Chronicle . 07-27-98

Some Like it Hot

DIRECTED BY: Billy Wilder

REVIEWED: 07-27-98

When itinerant jazz musicians Joe and Jerry (Curtis and Lemmon) inadvertently witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, they flee Chicago under the guise of Josephine and Geraldine and head to Miami with Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopaters, an all-girl traveling band featuring Sugar Kane Kowalcyzck (Monroe) on the ukulele. Arguably the best cross-dressing comedy of all time, it's also one of director Billy Wilder's most fluid, vibrant, laugh-out-loud accomplishments, rife with zippy one-liners delivered in Lemmon's impeccable style, and a rakishly outrageous Cary Grant impersonation from Curtis. Monroe is at her gooey, blonde best here as the pouty, hard-drinking Sugar, perpetually on the outs with her manager and forever falling for no-good saxophone players. "I'm tired of getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop," she coos, and then plays right into Curtis' rouse as Shell Oil magnate "Junior." Watch for classic funnyman Joe E. Brown as Miami's answer to Rico Suave, Osgood Fielding III, who promptly latches on to a bewildered Lemmon and proposes the marriage of the century. Zowee!

--Marc Savlov

Other Films by Billy Wilder
Double Indemnity
The Apartment

Film Vault Suggested Links
Mafia!
A Simple Plan
Sanity

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