This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Michael Anderson's* "Around the World in 80 Days" had to have been one of the most ambitious movies ever made at the time. Lots of sets, lots of animals, lots of traveling, and countless cameos. Obviously the downside is the casting of Shirley MacLaine (not of South Asian descent) as an Indian princess, as well as the depiction of Native Americans in one scene. Overall, it's an impressive piece of work. I suspect that this was the non-Spanish-speaking world's introduction to Cantinflas. You gotta appreciate what they put into this movie.As for other things, when David Niven's character insists that he always eats at a certain time, it reminded me of Sheldon Cooper. During the party scene in Spain, everyone's having fun while he just stares; typical Englishman keeping a stiff upper lip. During the scene where they burn parts of the boat to keep it going, I figured that they would eventually have to burn their clothes and arrive naked.If you judge the cast by the roles and personalities for which they're most famous, then the movie includes the Pink Panther (Niven), Pepe le Moko (Boyer), the Joker (Romero), the gangster (Raft), Clem Kadiddlehopper (Red Skelton), the Blue Angel (Dietrich), the Voice (Carradine), the swoon-inducer (Sinatra), deadpan guy (Keaton), the informer (McLaglen), Benzino Napoloni (Oakie), Mrs. Banks (Johns), Charlie Chan's #1 son (Luke), and of course, the guy who took down Joe McCarthy (Murrow). Directed by Elizabeth Taylor's future husband from a script by Mia Farrow's dad.I haven't seen every Oscar-nominated movie from 1956, but I'd say that this one deserved it (though it had tough competition from "Giant").*I decided to read about Michael Anderson, and surprisingly learned that he died just a few days ago.

6.8 really. People must just love boring movies. I do not like boring movie. This is slow and has an awful story line. It not a 6.8 that is just overrating it. This is very boring. I give it 4 out of 10. Because it so boring. Do not waste your money. And do not waste your time. You could your time doing better things then watching this boring movie. Life is to short for this boring movie. It so boring it is boring to watching. Do see this movie. It is not a good movie. Do not see it. You could see Godzilla. Or could see King Kong. Or you could see Gamera. You do not need to see this. You could see Star wars. There are a lot of great films out there. And this is not one of them. Do not see this movie.

Adaptation of Jules Verne's novel about a Victorian Englishman (David Niven) who bets that with the new steamships and railways he can do what the title says.What is most interesting about this film is that it is science fiction. Today (2015) it seems historical, but at the time the story was written it was quite a feat to circle the earth in 80 days. Now, it can be done in 80 hours (or less).The film has some down sides, notably the length (over three hours). This could probably be helped by cutting the intermission and the "Trip to the Moon" segment. There is also the strange casting of Peter Lorre as Japanese (though this is far from the first time).

Michael Anderson's film is justifiably memorable for its huge cast, its memorable photography (by Lionel Linden), its catchy theme tune (Victor Young), and its sheer brio. It remains producer Mike Todd's crowning achievement, a lasting legacy for a showman whose life was brutally curtailed by an air-crash in 1958. The epic is held together by two memorable performances from David Niven as Phileas Fogg and Cantinflas as his loyal servant Passepartout.Structurally speaking, however, AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS is a mess. There are some memorable individual sequences - for example, at the beginning when Fogg makes a bet in London's Reform Club with his fellow-members (Finlay Currie, Ronald Squire, Trevor Howard, Basil Sydney); or the brief exchange at the domestic services agency involving Fogg's former manservant (John Gielgud) and the proprietor (Noel Coward). Later on Fogg has a memorable exchange with the Indian Peninsular Railway Official (Ronald Colman), in which the two actors compete for who can speak their lines in the best RP (Received Pronunciation) accent. Once Fogg crosses to the United States, he has another memorable encounter with a Barbary Coast saloon pianist (Frank Sinatra).Yet such sequences are often separated by long stretches of film where nothing really happens: Passepartout has a long bull-fighting sequence, watched by Fogg and Achmed Abdullah (Gilbert Roland), that becomes tedious; likewise the funeral sequence where Fogg saves Princess Aouda (Shirley MacLaine) from death seems to be included simply to show off director Anderson's love of local color. In the end the experience of watching the film becomes an exercise in identifying the stars playing cameo roles - for a film buff of the mid-twentieth century, this can be a fascinating experience, but perhaps not to most viewers' taste. Nonetheless, it's fun to see actors such as Robert Newton, Joe E. Brown, Peter Lorre, John Carradine, John Mills, Glynis Johns, Hermione Gingold and even Buster Keaton in cameo roles. If you blink too much, you might miss them.David Niven doesn't have too much to do in this film, other than to reinvent his familiar screen persona as an urbane man-about-town, perpetually faced with the responsibility of taming his manservant's excesses. Nonetheless he does his task competently.AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS is an exhausting experience to watch, but one that still communicates incidental pleasures, especially to viewers from an older generation.