YMMV / The Great Race

• Awesome Music: For a given value of awesome, but Henry Mancini's work on the film (with a march as befitting the 1908 setting) was one of the most popular film scores in the orchestral "pops" repertoire until it was displaced by Star Wars.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: For a movie that up until that point had been a slapstick comedy, the Breather Episode when Natalie Wood sings a charming love song by a stream, complete with lyrics and a Follow the Bouncing Ball singalong like a Terry Tunes cartoon short, seems to come completely out of nowhere.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Peter Falk as Max, Fate's henchman, is one of the most popular characters in the film, and even gets a Big Damn Heroes moment.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Some fans consider Maggie / Professor Fate as having more chemistry than Leslie / Maggie. Probably not helped by how one hilarious scene has her actually kissing the guy. There's actually some Reality Subtext here. Natalie Wood worked on this movie out of contractual obligation, then to make matters worse she was paired up with Tony Curtis. They'd already done two films together (Kings Go Forth and Sex and the Single Girl) and had developed a passionate hatred for each other, so the lack of chemistry between Maggie and Leslie was genuine.
  • To be fair, she didn't much care for Jack Lemmon either.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The final scene where Professor Fate destroys the Eiffel Tower by accident. It would be funny when the movie was released, but in December of 1994 Air France flight 8969 gets hijacked and, after they're stopped, it's later revealed that they were going to attack the monument from the air. Then, seven years later, 9/11 happens, and Values Dissonance kicks in.
• Ho Yay: Professor Fate and Max. They bicker Like an Old Married Couple, especially noticable when Max complains about how grumpy Fate always is in the mornings, and act quite close during emotional scenes. At the end, Maggie intentionally tosses her bouquet to Max, who happily shows it to the Professor, then leans as if to kiss him before being brushed off.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Peter Falk as Max, a few years before he gained fame as Columbo.
  • Ross Martin just a couple of months before he started playing his most famous role, Artemus Gordon in The Wild Wild West.
• Rooting for the Empire: Despite Leslie being The Hero and the Knight in Shining Armor, Jack Lemmon's villainous, over-the-top, hammy portrayal won the hearts of many. Jack Lemmon even mentioned that he got more fan mail about the Professor than any other character he ever played.
  • It helps that Jack Lemmon and Peter Falk had a ton of comedic chemistry together while the heroes (Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, and Keenan Wynn) really didn't.

---