This one is just plain funny—deviously, dextrously, remorselesly so. Two guys (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) dolled up as girls, and Marilyn Monroe between them. Say no more! But I will, because Some Like It Hot is also plenty smart in its twisting of gender stereotypes (Lemmon gets more romantic action in a dress than he did in pants) and the possibility that a wolf (Curtis, donning thick glasses and a Cary Grant accent) could find true love the hard way. Curtis shares three of the great screen kisses with Monroe, who is magnif, whether cascading out of her flapper gowns or lending her adorable tremolo to cutesy tunes (“I Wanna Be Loved by You”) and suicidal torch songs (“I’m Thru With Love”). And yes, it’s still funny, from first gag to the priceless last one. It’s also one of the rare comedies that is enriched rather than exhausted at the end of a breathless two hours. Nobody’s perfect, but this film is.
All-TIME 100 Movies
TIME's Richard Corliss updates our All-TIME 100 list of the greatest films made since 1923 — the beginning of TIME — with 20 new entries
Some Like It Hot
Full List
Behind the List
A - C
- Aguirre: The Wrath of God
- The Apu Trilogy
- The Awful Truth
- Baby Face
- Bande à part
- Barry Lyndon
- Berlin Alexanderplatz
- Blade Runner
- Bonnie and Clyde
- Brazil
- Bride of Frankenstein
- Camille
- Casablanca
- Charade
- Children of Paradise
- Chinatown
- Chungking Express
- Citizen Kane
- City Lights
- City of God
- Closely Watched Trains
- The Crime of Monsieur Lange
- The Crowd
D - F
G - J
K - M
N - P
Q - S
T - Z
Great Performances
Guilty Pleasures
- Gone With the Wind, 1939, Victor Fleming, U.S.
- Tenth Avenue Angel, 1949, Roy Rowland, U.S.
- Sailor Beware, 1951, Hal Walker, U.S.
- Diabolique (Les Diaboliques), 1955, Henri-Georges Clouzot, France
- School Girl, 1971, David Reberg, U.S
- There’s Something About Mary,1998, Bobby and Peter Farrelly, U.S.
- Anatomy of a Murder, 1959, Otto Preminger, U.S.
- Gun Crazy, 1949, Joseph H. Lewis, U.S.
- The Incredible Shrinking Man, 1957, Jack Arnold, U.S.
- Joe Versus the Volcano, 1990, John Patrick Shanley, U.S.
10 Best Soundtracks
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