Red and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Red and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World are two on-the-road comedies with large ensemble casts made of some very famous actors. They follow huge groups of people on a mission to do or discover something. Red centers on a violent plot where Frank Moses is targeted by the CIA, which forces him to enlist some old black-ops pals of his to help him stay alive and uncover the plot against him. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World, however, is a much lighter and family-friendly comedy with lots of slapstick. In the movie several across-country travelers come upon a man who has just been in an accident and is dying, and he informs them with his last words that there is a large stash of loot buried somewhere nearby. They all end up racing to get to it first. The man was a bank robber that a police chief has been trying to track down for years and he catches on to his tip to the passersby.

The two movies both end loudly and not exactly as you might suspect. In Red the main baddie turns into a good guy at the end and in Mad World the main good guy takes a criminal turn at its ending. The last couple of minutes of Mad World go to the extremes of slapstick and silliness. While Red also goes to an extreme, it goes to a different extreme. Things get overly violent and less goofy in its closing confrontation between good and evil.

That is also one way that Mad World is different, it doesn’t really have a line between good and evil. Everyone is motivated by greed. The money is stolen too! The police chief seems good until he makes a run for the money himself.

One can definitely draw comparisons between the two. They are more different from each other than other films we have compared before however. The main difference was the tone. Review-wise, one was also far superior to the other, but this isn’t my review. Now on to the next duo of movies.