What Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis do in Some Like it Hot would be par for the course in modern movies – every other month, similar fish-out-of-water movies première with men posing as women (Tootsie), women posing as men (The Associate), black people posing as white people (White Chicks – albeit in a terrible film.), and on and on.
What makes Some Like it Hot different are three things: the strength of its comedy, the fact that this was even before the sixties(!) and the presence of Marilyn Monroe, then at the height of stardom.
Enter a major detour in the form of luscious Marilyn Monroe as Sugar Kane, given one of the sexiest (yet innocent) entrances ever afforded a star. Snugly fit in flashy 'Jazz Age' threads, a blast from the locomotive's engine taunts her incredible hour-glass figure as she rushes to catch her train to Florida. The boys, stopped dead in their high-heeled tracks by this gorgeous vision, decide maybe the gig might not be so bad after all. As the totally unreliable but engagingly free-spirited vocalist/ukelele player for the band, Sugar gets instantly chummy with the "girls" when they cover for her after getting caught with a flask of booze. As things progress, complications naturally set in - playboy Curtis falls for Monroe but has his "Josephine" guise to contend with, while Lemmon's "Daphne" has to deal with the persistently amorous attentions of a handsy older millionaire.
What results is an uproarious Marx Brothers-like farce with mistaken identities, burlesque-styled antics, and a madcap chase finale, all under the exact supervision of director Billy Wilder, who also co-wrote the script. Lemmon and Curtis pull off the silly shenanigans with customary flair and are such a great team, you almost wish they ended up together! Curtis does a dead-on Cary Grant imitation while posing as a Shell Oil millionaire to impress Marilyn; Lemmon induces campy hilarity in his scenes with lecherous Joe E. Brown (who also gets to deliver the film's blue-ribbon closing line).
The film is dotted with fun, atmospheric characters. Pat O'Brien and George Raft both get to spoof their Warner Bros. stereotypes as cop vs. gangster, Joan Shawlee shows off a bit of her stinger as the by-the-rules band leader Sweet Sue and Mike Mazurki overplays delightfully the archetypal dim-bulbed henchman.
For those head scratchers who can't figure out why the so-called "mild" humour of Some Like It Hot is considered such a classic today, I can only presume that they have been brought up on, or excessively numbed by, the graphic, mindless toilet humour of present-day "comedies." (see White Chicks for the perfect example). There was a time when going for a laugh had subtlety and purity - it relied on wit, timing, inventiveness and suggestion - not shock or gross-out value. It's the difference between Sid Caesar and Andrew "Dice" Clay; between Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon and Chris Farley and David Spade; between I Love Lucy and Married With Children; between Lemmon's novel use of maracas in the hilarious "engagement" sequence, and Cameron Diaz's use of hair gel in a scene that ANYBODY could have made funny. Jack Lemmon could do more with a pair of maracas than most actors today could do with a whole roomful of props. While Some Like It Hot bristles with clever sexual innuendo, today's "insult" comedies are inundated with in-your-face sexual assault which, after awhile, gets quite tiresome -- lacking any kind of finesse and leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination. I still have hope...