Konterr Brilliant and touching

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Catherina If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Robert J. Maxwell Tony Curtis is an ambitious young saxophonist who shows up in New York looking for a job. He's from Milwaukee. (!) He hasn't brought much money, only his instruments, and he's stumped when the Dixie Hotel (!) demands seven dollars a night for a room. (!) LOL. God, I loved New York City in 1960. As a young feller I was on a first-name basis with every one of its park benches in Washington Square.Curtis manages to find a room for a few dollars a night in a boarding house run by a tough old broad. Oh, she's crust on the outside. But underneath that, she's a real softy. And underneath THAT, she's a real MEAN barracuda.She finds a shabby room for Curtis by the simple expedient of throwing Debby Reynolds out because she's in arrears. But Curtis, a gentleman of the Midwest, offers to share the room because Reynolds has no other place to go and is one step away from becoming a working girl. Do they fight, you ask? Do they argue? Do they trade favors? Do they fall in love? You're kidding.It was written by Garsin Kanin who knows the tough underbelly of the city. It began as a play and maybe that accounts for the extended talk fests involving Curtis and Reynolds. The viewer already knows what's going to happen the moment they meet. Neither is going to wind up in the booby hatch. This is not Tennessee Williams.The writing is uneven. If Jack Oakie, as Mac the bartender, was any more avuncular it would have launched me into a series of clonic spasms. But when Kanin gets the right actors in the right scene, he wins every time. Take Don Rickles, as Reynolds' boss at the dance hall. Kids, a dance hall is a place where you can pay to enter and where lonesome men go to buy tickets to dance with the ladies. The most famous of them was, and maybe still is, Roseland, where I took an attractive young lady named Rose Brown. I don't remember what she looked like but who could forget that name -- "Rose" "Brown." Anyway, Reynolds doesn't make much money dancing with the drunks and the goaty customers, and she's in debt to Don Rickles, who is constantly urging her to "have drinks and a dinner" with a nice rich customer. Just be accommodating. In a completely unnecessary scene, Rickles forces her to remove most of her clothing.Best scene in the entire film: Tony Curtis gets a chance to audition for a famous combo called The Red Peppers. He shows up, bringing all his four reed instruments, eager for a job. The group is a phony. After a bit of practice, they send Curtis out for beer and pretzels, steal all his instruments and his seersucker jacket, and exit through the window. It's heartbreaking but it's hilarious. The dialog is exquisite. The cynical leader of the group is played by Ed Bushkin, a well-known pianist and composer ("Just Look At Me Now"). And when the saxophonists toot, they really toot, making Curtis look like the tyro he is. Elmer Bernstein, who wrote the musical score, is a group member. Later on, Gerry Mulligan makes a brief appearance.Both Curtis and Reynolds are professional performers and it shows. But they're miscast. Tony Curtis, born Bernie Schwartz in the Bronx, is a naive youth from Milwaukee? And Debby Reynolds is sexy in a dramatic role but she's too girlish. She has a piping high voice. She's just not convincing as a tough New Yorker, not here and not in "The Catered Affair." Somebody attractive but deeper could have handled it better, maybe someone like Patricia O'Neal.It's not badly done, not insulting in any way, although it would have been nice to have more than just a few second-unit shots of Jack Dempsey's and the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The comic interludes alone make it worth catching.

sensha I am surprised at the reviews thus far posted, as they miss one of the major novelties of this movie. While Tony Curtis is never going to win any awards for his musicianship, the little "group" that he tries to join contains some pretty impressive "ringers", especially for a movie that isn't all that much about the musical side of things.Any group that contains the likes of Gerry Mulligan AND Sam Butera is going to raise more than a few musical eyebrows. As mentioned above, the music used in the film is nothing to get too worked up about, but these two icons (plus the other sidemen that surround them) are reason enough to consider this one "special".A musical note or two about Curtis is in order here as well. He also played a tenor saxophone player in the iconic Some Like It Hot. While his autobiography is silent as to his actual saxophone playing skills, some of the fingerings that he used in that film were right for the music being played (although out of sync with the actual film sound track). It is mentioned that he has some flute playing skills in the biography, so his being a sax player is not out of the realm of possibility.The horns that he is seen playing in this movie all appear to be Selmer instruments. When his horns get "lifted" by the boys in the band, Debbie Reynolds goes to bat for him and buys him a set of horns "to get by" on his cruise ship gig. However, the instruments purchased are Leblanc horns, recognizable by the distinctive tweed covered cases in which they came. But, when he is seen performing on the ship, he is again playing Selmer instruments. Since this was well before product placement in movies became common, it may be that he was playing his own horns and the Leblanc cases were used for their visual appeal.

bkoganbing In watching The Rat Race today, I was struck by the fact that this film did not lead to any more parts like the one she played here for Debbie Reynolds. She was quite a revelation as the girl who's been around the block a few times and just struggling to stay alive in that meat grinder called New York.By the time The Rat Race came out, Tony Curtis was already being taken quite seriously as an actor with The Sweet Smell Of Success and The Defiant Ones behind him. But Reynolds was America's sweetheart, still basking in the sympathy of the American public when Elizabeth Taylor stole husband Eddie Fisher. She played good girl roles almost exclusively, but here she takes on a part that you would have more readily cast Elizabeth Taylor.Curtis is from the Midwest and an aspiring jazz musician who comes to New York, but gets quickly victimized by a cruel city. Reynolds is a woman who is an aspiring model who does what she has to in order to survive. But that's coming to an end as landlady Kay Medford wants her money and thug Don Rickles who she's into wants something else and quick. The two of them decide to move in together without benefit of clergy, something that was still quite daring with the Code firmly in place. It's strictly economic at first, but you know these two people living one step from the gutter would fall for each other.The film was based on a play that Garson Kanin wrote and ran 84 performances in the 1949-50 season on Broadway. It starred Betty Field and Barry Nelson on stage and repeating his role from the original cast as a musician con man is jazz great Joe Bushkin. Besides Reynolds the performance to really watch out for is Don Rickles as murderous hood Nellie. For those of you who think of Rickles as insult comedian to the stars, his performance will knock your socks off. He far more than Debbie was the real surprise here. Jack Oakie has one of his last roles as a philosophical bartender, serving drinks in the downstairs of Kay Medford's boarding house.I have a sneaking suspicion that Debbie Reynolds might have taken this part to prove she had every bit the acting chops Elizabeth Taylor did. She certainly proved it to me and The Rat Race ranks as one of the best performances by either of the two stars.

MartinHafer Why the producers decided to cast New Yorker Tony Curtis in the film, I just can't understand. Why would they cast him of all people considering he is supposed to be playing a guy from Milwaukee who gets lost in the big bad city of New York? With his very strong New York accent, it just didn't make sense. Listening to him, he sounded like he should have been perfectly at home in the Bronx or Brooklyn! Fortunately, the rest of the movie is so good that I really didn't mind the odd casting. In fact, Tony Curtis and Debbie Reynolds were excellent in the film--with acting and dialog that seemed pretty realistic. They both play "starving artists" who come to New York but find success is somehow always out of sight. I teach at an art school and would like to show this to my students so they can, perhaps, see what it usually is like on the slow road to making a living.I also appreciated how the writers didn't allow the film to slide too far into sentimentality even though this was a romantic-comedy of sorts. That means when there can be a magical scene where things all work out perfectly, the writers chose instead to allow for a more realistic moment where things worked out,...somewhat. My favorite example was near the end when it appeared that Curtis' musical instruments unexpectedly re-appeared. This LOOKS like a "happily ever after moment" but there is a great twist--a twist that reminds us that in this film, just like in real life, Murphy's Law so often applies. To me, the real magic in the film is how despite all these setbacks and problems, the couple STILL manage to find each other and some shred of happiness. And, if you think about it, this is a great lesson for everyone.A nice, romantic, funny but occasionally sad and cynical little film about life and little people.By the way, look for Don Rickles in one of his earliest roles. He plays a guy who is amazingly creepy and cruel--quite a change from his later comedic roles. Also, the sweet guy behind the bar is Jack Oakie in one of his later roles