Saturday, August 2, 2014

Nobody is Perfect



The year is 1959 and you are getting ready to go to the cinema to go see Marilyn Monroe’s new movie, Some Like It Hot. To make this movie even better Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are staring in the film, as WOMEN??? WHAT?! That’s can’t be right, but wait it is. 



Warning, Plot contains spoilers: Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon), two musicians, are down on their luck. They need money. As they head for a job they witness the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre while hiding behind a car. Just as they were about to be killed themselves, Toothpick Charlie tries to get the phone even though he has been shot. Spats and his gang turn and finish him off, while Joe and Jerry take the opportunity to run out of the garage. They know they need to get out of town, but how? They decide that the only way out is to join the Sweet Sue’s all woman’s band.
They are now Josephine and Daphne. When they meet Sugar Kane Kowalczyk (Marilyn Monroe) they both are truly infatuated with her. Almost forgetting they are girls, they can’t flirt plus Sugar has sworn off male saxophone players and only wants a millionaire. Once the band gets to Miami Joe has his opportunity to make her dreams come true. He disguises himself as Junior a millionaire, heir to the Shell Oil Company.
Meanwhile Jerry as Daphne is having a millionaire enthralled with her, Osgood Fielding III. After a night out on the town dancing to let Joe use Osgood's yacht to woo Sugar, Osgood proposes to Daphne and she says yes!

As the movie goes on, more trouble happens. The hotel then host the “Friends of Italian Opera” which just happen to be the Italian Mob. Well it just happens that Spats and his henchmen are at the convention. Both Joe and Jerry start to pack, wanting to get out of the hotel as fast as possible. Spats and his henchmen figure out that the girls are the men from the garage. They go on a chase throughout the entire hotel. Eventually dressed as an old man in a wheel chair and the attended that pushes it, are still discovered and hide under a table. They once again witness a mob killing, this time the victims being Spats and his henchmen.

Just as their leaving, going to use Osgood for a getaway since he and Daphne are engaged, Joe/Josephine/Junior see’s Sugar on stage singing that she will never love again. With one kiss she realizes that they are one in the same person. She runs to the pier and gets into the boat just as they are leaving. Joe tells her that she shouldn’t love him but she doesn’t care. Then Jerry decides that he needs to tell Osgood that they can’t get married. He tries everything from can’t fit in Osgood’s mothers dress, smokes constantly to not being able to have children and each time Osgood has a reasonable reply. Jerry finally takes off his wig and states he’s a man, Osgood without blinking says “Well, nobody’s perfect.”






Now why see this movie in the year 2014? Because it is still an incredible film that will make you enjoy every second you watch. In 2000, the American Film Institute listed this movie as the greatest American comedy film of all time. Now with that, why wouldn’t you want to watch it? It is a hilarious movie, even with the mob killing- though those aren’t that funny. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon gender bend and luckily it’s not the normal stupid comedy that happens when men cross-dress. Normally it is to completely make fun of either themselves or other women, but both the actors and the story do not do this. They try to be woman, walk, talk, dress and even act like them. They also get to see the daily life woman endured, still relevant to today’s society.  Sugar talks about how men have treated her, used her for a short time and then just leave her and break her heart; exactly what Joe does to woman. He sees what being that type of man does to woman and how bad he has acted. Even though he learns this, he still makes a disguise and new identity to make her fall in love with him. He might have learned part of the lesson, but he thinks his new fake person, Junior, will take all the problems away even if it is a lie. At the end of the movie it seems to have not mattered, she still feel in love with the saxophone player. With the relationship between Daphne and Osgood shows that maybe what’s on the inside is what matters. Even after finding out that Daphne is Jerry, he just exclaims, “nobody’s perfect”. Well that’s an understatement. No one in that movie is perfect! It shows that what’s within matters more since Osgood could look past the fact that Daphne was truly a guy but also that maybe even homosexuality was ok or acceptable. Osgood did not freak out and stop the boat and push Jerry out, he let him stay in and completely accepted him. Though we know that Jerry is not gay, maybe Osgood is and that is why he has had so many wives. But that detail is never revealed. The movie is accepting of all things, except maybe murder where the police might just finally catch the mobsters. You can lie, drink, be wild, cross-dress, play music, and have a ball and still win in the end by getting the girl. It also is just has one of the best ending lines of all movies!
Ending scene:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYUfPTeE0DM
If you want a good movie to watch with friends, family or just by yourself one evening, pick Some Like It Hot, you won’t be disappointed!


Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, re-creating their roles in Billy Wilde's 1959 classic, Some Like It Hot, photographed by Annie Leibovitz, Vanity Fair, April 1995
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