Around The World in 80 Days is the slowest paced race movie you are ever going to see. The cinematographer sure had fun filming all these scenes but it slows the plot down to a crawl. Do we really need to see so much background and color from each and every country Fogg visits? There are some moments in this film where nearly a half hour goes by where Niven has only a few lines.

Cantiflas steals the movie. As the man servant, he does all of the work. He does the bullfight that procures the boat. He saves the Indian princess. He could have done this trip without Fogg. Okay, he would need Fogg's money but Fogg certainly could not have done it without him.

The huge cast is somewhat fun to watch. All of the famous cameos come and go quickly. Still this very long movie is more of an event film than it is an entertaining one. Worth seeing, if you have never seen it, but once is definitely enough.

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I disagree with Eric. On the contrary one of the things that makes this a special movie are all the shots of the different countries visited by Phileas Fogg and Passepartout as they race around the globe. From London to France then in a hot air balloon to Spain, then all points East, including the jungles of India (where they rescue a princess about to be sacrificed, played by Shirley MacLaine) and on to Hong Kong then Japan, and from there to the United States, beginning at a saloon in San Francisco followed by a train ride across the great plains and being attacked by Indians, finally from New York back to London. Where (oops) Passepartout left the gas on, but fortunately Phileas Fogg wins his bet and is found innocent of robbing the Bank of England. Whew!

Phileas Fogg is such a great British character and David Niven plays him to perfection. Nothing ever riles this guy. He is a complete creature of habit, even insisting his bath water be an exact temperature. He takes everything he does quite seriously for, "An Englishman never jokes about a wager, sir." That might be true but as Eric pointed out it is his loyal manservant that gets them out of nearly every scrape, enabling them to successfully circumnavigate the Earth in the allotted 80 days.

The numbers for this movie are truly astounding. It used 140 sets built at 6 Hollywood studios, as well as in England, Hong Kong and Japan. 74,685 costumes were designed, made or rented. The cast and crew flew over 4,000,000 miles. 68,894 extras were used in 13 different countries. And a record number of animals took part in this movie including 3,800 sheep, 2,448 buffalo, 950 donkeys, 800 horses, 512 monkeys, 17 bulls, 15 elephants, 6 skunks and 4 ostriches.

One of the grandest screen epics ever made!

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