Interesting story, but the movie has too many drawn out scenes. The race scene is utterly ridiculous. Also, was there really a need for using the song "Waltzing Matilda" as much?

Some parts of this film are great, but I could have done without the Ava Gardner character. It is a fairly depressing. Glad I saw it, but wouldn't want to watch it again.

a great sci-fi story is bogged down by light preachiness and an overly optimistic message that falters on the side of cheesiness. if it ended about fifteen seconds earlier and in a more consistently bleak manner then i would have been truly stunned.

Pretentious film about the end of the world.

One of the most powerful movies I've ever seen -- so powerful that, as a child of the Cold War, it horrifies me to the point that I cannot watch it.

Does drag in places, and felt the story was over sentimental, but hard to tell if this was just the style of the era.

Kramer's take on the end of the world is intoxicating and you'll be in turn thoroughly depressed and, depending on your tolerance level for sentimentality, averse to the more maudlin beats. For this subject matter, however, you really do need something contrapuntal... so those moments are (almost) justified. The Grand Prix parable was powerful. Fred Astaire, in a serious role, all but steals the film.

One of Stanley Kramer's "important" films that actually works. Fred Astaire plays a serious role here, and he's damn good. It doesn't end like you'd think, either

I really love the concept, and a lot of scenes were pretty great. Fred Astaire is particularly good. Aside from some overused Dutch angles, a fairly solid film, though it does seem to drag at times and have a thousand endings.

It's a bit disorienting how this connects the cheeriest scenes with its most dismal without skipping a beat - for the most part, the film works, but there's inconsistencies [the death race was......interesting]. Astaire/Gardner/Tate are the stand-outs while Peck/Perkins don't seem to give their best.

Nearly nothing happens, then the ending tells us how much we suck. Manipulative in a conceited, overtly moralistic way.

A poorly paced, slow thriller with a sledgehammer of an ending on the, of course, rather negative consequences of not getting our crap together on world peace, already. At least it's competent, with an interesting, non-dancing role for an older Fred Astaire. One would never think Kramer would bless us with 'Inherit the Wind' the year after.

On her arrival at Essendon Airport in 1959, ava Gardiner apparently remarked: "what an appropriate place to film the end of the world!" Gold