A follow-up to "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines" simply because the character played by Terry-Thomas is the son of his character from that film (having gone to his great reward in that old plane junkyard in the stratosphere), this deals with great race car drivers from all over Europe angling to get to Monte Carlo and getting more ruthless as they get closer. Gert Frobe is back as well, having appeared with TT in all three films of the unconnected series, but all quite similar.
After a very funny credit sequence with Jimmy Durante singing the title song, the action begins, with Tony Curtis picking up Susan Hampshire, delayed because of her demands in several scenes throughout the film, and Peter Cook and Dudley Moore as two British soldiers being blocked along the way by three very obnoxious French girls who shouldn't be riding a bike let alone driving a speeding car. After a while, their chirping nonsense gets tiresome, obviously a snack at "women drivers" since they don't seem to care who they injure or kill as long as they win.
Still this is a very funny film with plenty of action and silent movie like chases across some beautiful locations. It's definitely a film of its time, but outside of the three French women, I enjoyed the characters including the smug oversexed Italian driver played by Walter Chiari. The character played by Hampshire comes off first as scatterbrained and passive aggressively manipulative, but the script manages to reform her. A major improvement from "Those Fantastic Flying Fools" which had the look but not the cleverness.
After a very funny credit sequence with Jimmy Durante singing the title song, the action begins, with Tony Curtis picking up Susan Hampshire, delayed because of her demands in several scenes throughout the film, and Peter Cook and Dudley Moore as two British soldiers being blocked along the way by three very obnoxious French girls who shouldn't be riding a bike let alone driving a speeding car. After a while, their chirping nonsense gets tiresome, obviously a snack at "women drivers" since they don't seem to care who they injure or kill as long as they win.
Still this is a very funny film with plenty of action and silent movie like chases across some beautiful locations. It's definitely a film of its time, but outside of the three French women, I enjoyed the characters including the smug oversexed Italian driver played by Walter Chiari. The character played by Hampshire comes off first as scatterbrained and passive aggressively manipulative, but the script manages to reform her. A major improvement from "Those Fantastic Flying Fools" which had the look but not the cleverness.