It was a fine movie, but it was a bad best picture winner. I remember associating this movie with It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World as a kid (similarities being that both movies include a crazy race and both feature about a thousand familiar faces), but, as far as I remember, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is Way Way Way Way Better than Around the World in Eighty Days. Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the guy at the piano turning around and being Frank Sinatra, or the conductor on the train that is getting attacked by Indians being a really old Buster Keaton, or Passepartout (played by Cantinflas) waking up on a ship to a particularly rotund Peter Lorre playing a ship steward. Even better were the ones I didn't notice and saw in the ending credits. That woman in the saloon was Marlene Dietrich? The "Indian" princess was a young Shirley MacLaine? Awesome!
Basically, I guess this movie was pretty entertaining, and it was big in a way I often like movies to be, but it had no place winning BP. 1956 was a weak year, and I don't really care too much about ANY of the movies that were nominated (Wyler's Friendly Persuasion, Giant, The King and I, and The Ten Commandments).
My final comment has to be that as Eitan and I were watching this movie, I got the corresponding songs from the Chipmunk Adventure in my head for each scene. When they were in Spain, I got the Mexico song in my head ("I yi yi yi yi yi like you verrrry much...") Then, when they were in India, and we saw snake charmers, I started singing, "Tell me what I need to do to get lucky with you." Anyway, it's a very basic 6/10.
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