The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Bomb Rating: 

Ever gone to Italy and called everybody "Spaghetti Boy?" I did. They didn't like it.

Clint Eastwood is "the good," Lee Van Cleef is "the bad," and Eli Wallach is "the ugly." The main problem with this scenario is that Wallach and Van Cleef are about equally bad, and, if you ask me, Van Cleef is uglier than Wallach. Plus, Wallach is constantly calling Eastwood "blondie" except his hair is brown, which makes you wonder why director Sergio Leone didn't just call it "The Good, the Bad, and the Stupid." It would have made more sense.

This is what's called a Spaghetti Western. Where's the damn spaghetti? When Tuco (Wallach) finally sits down to eat with Angel Eyes (Van Cleef), they chow down on some kind of goulash. Perhaps it's called a Spaghetti Western because it's long and stringy. Maybe it's just because director Sergio Leone is Italian, which is pretty much an insult, I think. Ever gone to Italy and called everybody "Spaghetti Boy?" I did. They didn't like it.

The movie is two hours and forty minutes long because Leone doesn't have the slightest idea what the Old West was really like, so he spends way too much time trying to figure it out. Consequently, the good and the ugly run around screwing each other over until they stumble across a coach and learn that somebody has buried a lot of money somewhere. This forces them to work together because only Eastwood knows exactly where it's hidden.

Unfortunately, this also allows Leone to drag the story out for another hour. It takes him a hundred minutes to get to the actual story and then another sixty to resolve it. I would have rather sat in the theater the entire time and whittled.

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