Martin and Lewis

Biopics can be a dangerous and tricky business, especially when actors portray other actors. In this case all was well. The acting was good and the sets were well planned. Sean Hayes was perfectly cast as the zany Jerry Lewis. Jeremy Northam, on the same hand, had that dangerous charm that the early Dean Martin was known for. However, his lip-synching was occasionally far off and when speaking he often sounded distractedly more like Humphrey Bogart than Dean Martin.

Overall, the energy and the mood was well maintained, and we got to see inside the lives of two wonderful talents from the past.

Hats off!

Save for a slight alteration of a fact in the genesis of the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis saga, this made-for-television bio-pic is perfect in its story and depictions. The alteration concerns how the duo got together for what would be the triggering of their memorable 10-year partnership. The film shows Lewis, about to bomb himself out of his engagement at the 500 Club in Atlantic City, phoning Martin's (first) agent, Lou Perry. Lewis specifically asks him to send Dean to reprise their earlier-shown, spur-of-the-moment, stage collaboration (at the Havana-Madrid Club). In reality, it was the compassionate Perry who, upon receiving a frantic call from a sobbing Jerry Lewis asking for help, decides to send Dean Martin to the rescue. The result correctly is shown to be alchemic, and, for at first better-then-worse, the Martin and Lewis team is truly born. In 1973, Arthur Marx penned an outstanding bio-novel about the duo, "Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime." As Marx, the writers/producers of this film are admirably unafraid to present full character profiles of Martin and Lewis. As human beings, the performers sometimes glaringly left much to be desired. Jeremy Northam and Sean Hayes, as Dean and Jerry, give excellent performances, as do Paula Gale and Kate Levering as Martin's first and second wives, Betty and Jeanne. This is a first-rate production, not the least of its values is its capturing of the post-war cultural flavor of the period in which the Martin and Lewis tandem flourished.

I think a better title for "Martin & Lewis" would have been, "Dean Martin was nothing without Jerry Lewis". Sadly, this was not true.

It's no surprise that Lewis said he loved this film. At the same time, I'm sure if Martin were alive today, he would feel he had just been roasted, in a bad way.

It seems as though this film was actually written by Jerry Lewis or by fans of Lewis angry at Dean Martin. The portrayal of Dean Martin in this film as an alcoholic, philandering, friend of mobsters is wholly inaccurate. This TV-movie would have you believe that without Lewis, Martin would have gone down in flames early in his career. Again, this is simply not true. Dean Martin was already a success when Lewis came along with sole comic routine. Further proof against this fallacy is the fact that Martin went on, after the dissolution of the partnership, to a very successful career in films and music.

The real story as to why this partnership broke-up? Jerry Lewis was an insecure, money-grubbing, control-freak that would steal Martin's lines and would be jealous of any attention Martin would get. Does this TV-film allude to any of this? To its' credit, yes, it does, but the films' writers dire need to try and show a balanced reason for why the comedy team broke up moves past these issues far too fast and attacks Martin in ways that have no connection to reality.

The worst part of all this is that I didn't even find myself laughing at any of the "comic" bits that were in this film. I think if you're going to make a film about one of the most successful comedy teams in history, you should at least make some of it funny.

If you liked Martin and Lewis movies, then you'll like this movie. It tells of the rocky history that may not have known about these two. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw it. Even though it was a made for TV movie, You'll still like it. I would even watch it again.

More and more, as the evolution of television leaps forward with such groundbreaking shows as 24, Band of Brothers and 6 Feet Under, we are taught how antiquated and limited your basic TV Movie has become. No better example here in MARTIN AND LEWIS which in years past would shine as your basic movie-of-the-week. But now, with those shining comparisons, it seems like a low-budget, commercial-laden highlight reel of a much longer and complex tale. That being said, the one thing that does rise above it's medium here is the talents of both Northam and Hayes. Jeremy Northam has a twinkle in his eye as he dances around the murmuring voice cadences of Dean Martin (who seems to be positing that Martin sounded drunk even when he wasn't...if that is possible). I don't know another actor who could so effortlessly play Martin's playful masculinity. Unfortunately the actor is forced to go from 0-60 because he must portray divorce, conflict and then playful boozer in scenes back-to-back. The same can be said of Hayes ,who has the unenviable job of homaging an actor still alive and is under that scrutiny (with the apparent well-wishing Lewis on-hand). Both actors live up to their spot-on casting but the production seems bogged down by it's limited time-length and by the length of ground it needs to cover (which it wearily tries to compensate for by endless scrolls of posters portraying the countless films these two did together). All in all, a great effort but, once again, it leaves one asking..."Why didn't they do this on HBO?" which is less a criticism of the movie than of network programming altogether.