Perhaps someone can explain to me...

You had to be living in 1959 to appreciate it. Societal changes including present political correctness
have rendered it not as humorous today.

Pretentious *beep* "humor" I did not get it in 1959 and I don't get today. Some people swear by Billy Wilder as a genius. In 1959 I saw this movie in New York. It was no big deal. Now they are trying to spin this as the greatest comedy ever. total *beep* 1959 Drag Queens were like a subject never discussed.I always thought Jack Lemmon was overrated. he overacted in every movie. Mr.Roberts. etc. I also never appreciated Tony Curtis. Hey,I can name 100 actors that could have played any of those roles. A typical Billy wilder overdirection. Too many jokes, too many contrived *beep* scenes. Too many character actors gansters. They used George Raft to make it look like a real gangster movie from the 1930s'. They look like they stole all the 1930 gangster movie scenes and edited them together.This was no big deal in 1959.Billy Wilder got away with a lot of *beep* in his movies. Mostly he used Marilyn Monroe as a prop. She couldn't act,sing,or dance. you want to spin this movie,Jack Lemmon, go right ahead,but we all know it was a cheap comedy.Shooting this in Black and white did not work.

The best movie comedy of all time seen during my 70 plus years was Danny Kayes,The Court Jester (1955). Don't watch it if your belly hurts when you laugh or the neighbours downstairs are apt to complain about the racket you make when rolling on the floor and the ceiling leak caused by your flooding pool of happy tears. Nonetheless, Some Like It Hot should be well up in that list with Trading Places.

The best explanation in answer to your question is as follows:

You don't get it, and you never will.

If "Zelig" is your favorite comedy you have a very particular sense of humour. Nothing wrong with this, but it would make it impossible for you to understand what most people find funny.

Hi, salesgab. We met over on the Citizen Kane page, and once again I think your personal response to an acclaimed film is sound. I'll tell the story of my own exposure to this movie, since it's both an old story and a new one.

I saw Some Like It Hot for the first time yesterday. However, I'm old enough to remember when it came out and how other kids talked about it in a gleefully knowing way, as if celebrating their initiation in the rites of grown-up entertainment. That talk, combined with the publicity stills of two men dressed as women cavorting with Marilyn Monroe, gave me a foreboding of ennui when I hadn't even studied French. I was and am indifferent to Marilyn Monroe, although I'm a male with standard wiring. I felt the cross-dressing gag to be a spent force as soon as I had seen the stills. And so I passed up that movie all these years.

Then I noticed that Halliwell's Film Guide gives SLIH four stars and refers to its qualities as "rarely duplicated and never equalled." Halliwell's is indeed my guide, so when the movie turned up on TV I watched it. I found it beautifully photographed. Otherwise, I kept waiting for the engine to turn over and finally realized that my old foreboding had been right. SLIH is a one-gag movie. What is essential to its appeal is that the gag is a naughty one; it paves the way for lots of nudge-nudge jokes about sex. Yes, "naughty" is a straitlaced word, but that's just the point. SLIH split the seams of a notoriously straitlaced decade in American history. It's far from being grown-up entertainment, but it was growing-up entertainment for moviegoers of the time and for Hollywood. It may be more than that to many people, just not to me.

Why does Some Like It Hot leave some of us cold? It might be interesting to pursue that question through comparisons with two movies that I, for one, like very much. The first is Preston Sturges's The Palm Beach Story (1942). I've chosen this example because it has several things in common with SLIH. Its mainstay is a wild train-to-Florida sequence. It gives us the funny millionaire character in two parts: an old one with a glittering eye for legs, and a young one with matrimonial ideas and a yacht. It works a running gag about sexual response. It even ends (*mini-spoiler alert*) with a madcap pairing of characters on the principle that any mate will do -- just not so madcap as in SLIH. The Palm Beach Story does make me laugh, again and again. If Sturges had made Some Like It Hot, I'm sure I'd have laughed at that the way others do; only then the others might not have laughed.

I'll also suggest a very different kind of comparison. To see another way of keeping the subject of sex in play throughout a movie, I recommend a non-comedy, The Haunting (the 1963 original). Apart from one brief, obliquely pointed dialogue, this film has nothing to do with sex -- on the surface. The surface, however, is a carefully-drawn map of underlying sexual tensions. Yes, that's another form of nudge-nudge entertainment. It's just a matter of finding a form that you enjoy. So it is with The Palm Beach Story.

Having reached the stage where I'm too opinionated to question my own response to a movie as you admirably do, salesgab, I maintain that if I give a movie one or two chances to impress me and it doesn't, then it was made for other people. I gave Some Like It Hot a chance yesterday. I'll give it a second one. But please, everybody, let's not impugn each other's wits for "getting" different things.

Reasons why this is the greatest comedy ever made?

I.A.L Diamond's script, even the most insignificant scenes in the film are loaded with witty lines and satire.
The acting, Monroe had huge talent as a comedic actress. Jack Lemmon had excellent timing and his facial expressions were hilarious.
The outrageousness of having a tough guy from the Bronx playing a prudish, high-strung lady.
The sexual tension between the three main characters. Bearing in mind this was just before the 'sexual revolution' of the sixties.
The pure outlandishness of the plot, interwoven with the viewer's thinking; well, what the hell else could they have done in that situation?
Possibly the best last line of any film ever made.

There are more reasons, of course, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head.

"My car is outside."
"Naturally."

I don't remember laughing one time when I saw Some Like It Hot which is really strange to me because not only is it regarded as a classic, but I really like Billy Wilder generally. One, Two, Three had me in stitches the hole time and nobody seems to appreciate it.