¡No suban el puente, bajen el río!

Pretty good film with Jerry Lewis and Terry Thomas involved in a money scam to raise money quickly. George Lester (Lewis) and his wife Pam (Jacqueline Pearce, who looks and sounds JUST like Audrey Hepburn, even her wardrobe) are getting a divorce, and in an attempt to hold onto her, George has spent a lot of money converting their house into a business. Pam will have none of it, and now George needs money fast. He and his buddy Willie Homer (Terry Thomas) come up with a scheme to sell something that belongs to Pam's new beau Dudley Heath (Nick Parsons). Thomas had made "Naked Truth" with P. Sellers ten years prior... Keep an eye out for a YOUNG Patricia Routledge - she will go on to be Hyacinth Bucket (its Bou - quet !) on BBC's "Keeping Up Appearances". She keeps getting in the way of George's scam. Viewers will know the gap-toothed Terry Thomas as the Colonel and botanist from Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (J. Lewis had a cameo in that) , and TONS of film appearances in the UK and the US. Here, Lewis plays the straight man, who spends most of the film storming and fuming, trying to keep Heath away from Pamela. The funniest scenes in the flick are on the two airplane trips from England to Lisbon, and the slapstick comedy there is done by the flight attendant (Bernard Cribbins). There ARE some funny one-off lines and scenes from J Lewis, (he even says two separate lines directly into the camera). While it IS a clever farce, this has more of a serious, believable story-line than the earlier, sillier J Lewis films where he spoke in a high pitched voice and tripped over himself every couple minutes. Unfortunately, the ending is quite weak, compared to the pace of the rest of the movie. Story by Max Wilk, who had also written "It Happened to Jane", starring Doris Day. Directed by Jerry Paris, best known from the Dick Van Dyke Show. He made the jump from acting to directing pretty early on, and did mostly directing from the 1960s on.

I'm well known--well, or at least I'd like to be well known--for arguing that it's a mistake to identify genres with emotional reactions in viewers. For example, I think it's wrong to conflate "horror" and "scary movie", where "scary" is intended to describe the emotional reaction the film is supposed to cause in the viewer. "Horror" instead should describe the content of the film and (maybe) the way that content is handled. Likewise with comedy, although the identification of modern comedies and laughter is probably the most difficult case to disentangle. (If we use the traditional sense of "comedy", the disentangling is much easier.)

I bring all of this up not to bore you, or even to flabbergast you with how pretentious, pompous, or pseudo-intellectual I sound (or whatever other epithet you'd like to apply). I bring it up merely to say that the problems I had with Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River aren't solely based on it being a largely unfunny comedy--which it is. There are unfunny comedies that can be good films. Just like horror films need not be scary to be good, comedies need not be funny, or need not primarily aim for that. But Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River has a host of other problems that make it not succeed above a "D" level, or a 6.

It's difficult, at least this far removed in time, to say what exactly director Jerry Paris was shooting for here. The film is about George Lester (Jerry Lewis). The beginning has a quickly progressing sequence where we see George go from being a kid to meeting his wife and already having problems with her as he takes her on extreme business trips (often in hostile environments) across the globe. This all happens in maybe four or five minutes. The common theme throughout these all-too-quick scenes, and the gist of the film, is that George is a cross between a misguided dreamer/entrepreneur and a con-man/shyster.

Unfortunately, this opening sequence was maybe the best thing about Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River. There was a good story in following George as he grew up, met his wife and went on crazy business trips. Much of the opening is funny. This material should have been stretched into feature length.

But instead, Paris and writer Max Wilk, adapting his own novel for the screenplay, give us a very convoluted story set while George and his wife, Pamela (Jacqueline Pearce), are getting divorced. The film ends up being about a confused scheme to bilk some oil sheiks out of £50,000 and at the same time, get George's wife back into his arms. The premise isn't bad, but the script and the direction are a mess.

It doesn't help that Paris seems like he tried to reel Lewis in a bit--or maybe Lewis was trying to appear relatively more serious and sophisticated. Whatever the cause, the result is that Lewis is a bit boring and uncharismatic, and when he tries to do more manic comic bits, they tend to fall flat. Constructing the plot so that Lewis is stuck at home, mostly not interacting with others, wasn't a great idea either. It's like a literal representation of "phoning in" a performance. At the same time, it's clear that Paris was often going for a "madcap comedy", but he achieves neither a convincing "madcap" feeling nor many laughs.

Pearce's performance is decent, but she seems to be in the wrong film. Her tone doesn't match anyone else's. There are also two very good supporting actors, Terry-Thomas, as fellow shyster H. William Homer, and Patricia Routledge, as Lucille Beatty. Both do the best job they can given the script and direction problems, but neither quite manage to take off--either they just can't muster the momentum to take over as they need to, or they weren't allowed to.

It's not that the film is a complete disaster. There are occasional sections that work, such as the beginning, mentioned above. There are also occasional sections that are funny, such as the idea of turning the house into a restaurant/disco, and the scenes featuring Fed Davies (Bernard Cribbins) in his second job (although the fact that he had two jobs wasn't explained very well). More often, there are scenes that might make you smile. But overall, the film is quite a trainwreck, because of the bad story/script and direction, despite the fact that the ending is satisfying, and the actors keep doing their best to surmount the difficulties.

Also on the positive side, the cinematography is crisp ad colorful if not particularly innovative, and the sets/locations are occasionally attractive. But this is not nearly enough to recommend the film.

I don't think I've seen any of Paris' other films yet, although I've seen a lot of his television work, which was often quite funny--he's directed episodes of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" (1961), "Mary Tyler Moore" (1970), and "The Odd Couple" (1970), for instance--all excellent shows. Maybe his talent was more suited for filling in 22 minutes of a comedy template than the more free-form structure of a feature film.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I can't make my mind up if this is one of those so bad it's good films or if it's just awful. The only stand out thing for me is it is the first film appearance of the fantastic British actress Patricia Routledge as a dotty girl guide leader. Other than that, it's one of those films you either give up on half way through because it's so terrible or stick with it because it's a bit bonkers.

Jerry was cardboardish and unfunny. Good effort by Terry-Thomas, his scenes were funny. Jacqueline Pearce as Jerry wife was attractive but added nothing to the film. There was generally poor writing & directing. I was surprised to see Jerry Paris (the dentist neighbor from the Dick Van Dyke Show) was the director and not Jerry Lewis himself.

The unseen pilot of the Plane to Lisbon on the British Air Company that has no offices had some funny lines. I particularly like the line were they cruising " somewhere between 8,000 and 30,000 feet." I cannot really find any reason to recommend watching this movie, it is not campy and doesn't even show off Jerry's typical shtick.

Jerry Lewis as a professional schemer who marries a lovely Brit and moves to Swinging London, but neglects his new spouse by always putting his eccentric clients first. She sues for divorce and gets custody of their manor--but while she's away, Lewis sneaks back in and turns the property into a restaurant/discotheque with a Chinese theme. Lewis, working solely as an actor-for-hire, is more appealing when he's restrained, but at the same time was getting too old for juvenile antics like this. Screenwriter Max Wilk adapted his own novel (!), but doesn't have much of a sense of humor. His ingredients here include loud divorce arguments, the mumps, blackmail, suspected infidelity...and Lewis doing a really awful Chinese imitation with his two front teeth stuck out. *1/2 from ****