Slapstick (Of Another Kind)

With huge talents such as Jerry Lewis & Madeline Kahn I thought this movie was going to be gas, sitting in my favorite chair ready to laugh...NEVER DID. Movie made me ill, The directors & producers of this film should be arrested for letting this "VOMIT" on the screen.

The concept of having Jerry Lewis as a space alien could have been funny (See Visit to a Small Planet) which wasn't that funny either, but it wasn't crap like this. I've seen bad movies, like "Manos Hands of Fate", "Gigli", "Plan 9 From Outer Space", and many other terrible films, but with the exception of "Gigli", this is the worst movie I have ever seen, I truly had to take Maalox after this one. How in the Hell did they get The KING of Comedy, Jerry Lewis, and one of the funniest ladies to ever live Madeline Kahn to star in this bag of Dung?

They must have owed favors to the producers or something, because this movie really bit the big one.

Pardon My French, but It Sucked!

I had to see this movie because I had no choice. I was taking a trip in a bus and they put this movie on the bus's TV. I never get asleep on a bus specially when there's a movie playing but in this case I better tried to sleep because I couldn't stand watching this movie. The worst movie I've ever seen. I got headache and felt dizzy when it finished.

I stumbled on a mention of this movie after Jerry Lewis died. Based on a Vonnegut book, I expected something different and was not disappointed in that respect. It really impressed me as something that they just threw together in real time, just figuring out what to do next in between shooting scenes. I'm extremely surprised at caliber of some of the name involved in the project, Jerry Lewis (two roles!) and Orson Welles?!?! I give them some credit for trying to make a film out of the crazy book Slapstick, even though it is a colossal failure and only covers the beginning of the novel. A few scenes remind me of typical Tom Green comedy schtick, nothing but noise and mess, but just noise and mess doesn't make something funny, it's just infantile. I watched it yesterday and I think it is like trying to get the smell of burnt milk out of your nose, the ridiculously bad scenes just hang around in my memory. Someone would literally have to pay me $500 to watch this again, it is that painful.

Despite the consensus that Jerry Lewis hasn't been funny in decades, I opted to watch this painful farce out of my reverence for the great book which 'inspired' it. And it had Marty Feldman -usually a real hoot. What unforgivable tripe! Lewis and Khan play Wilbur and Eliza (giant, ugly twins who are a genius collective genius when together, but idiots when apart) and their aristocrat parents terribly. Sadly, I'll concede that it sticks to the book fairly well -THE FIRST HALF! All the best portions are ultimately lost due to a cop-out screenplay which aims to get laughs from caper-style bumbling and mess-making by over-aged comedians sadly better suited to telethons. Read the novel -it's brilliant; Wilbur becomes the last (and tallest ever) President of the United States just before a plague kills off the majority of its population (wildly suspected to be due to inhalation of microscopic Chinese). His recollections of his better years and falling-out with Eliza are signiature bitter-sweet Vonnegut. The best part of the movie was Pat Morita as a prototypical 3" Chinaman ambassador.

Vonnegut novels have proven time and again very difficult to translate to film. For whatever reason, the subtlety and humanity of the novels get lost or scrambled in the interpretation. And this is probably the most glaring example.

Missing most of the point of the book and pulling focus from any reflection on loneliness or the absurdity of modern life and putting that energy into seeing Jerry Lewis interact with a poorly SFX overlay fortune-cookie-shaped UFOs. Which is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the high key racism in the film.

An arguably stellar cast gets mostly wasted on a joyless slog through a story that feels only tenuously adjacent to the source material.

I was too young when it came out to notice, but it's hard to imagine this seeing some release in the same year that Ghostbusters came out. It feels like it was made in a different decade, in a different dimension. I feel like this film and Heartbeeps bring similar grim energies. Both films I find interesting in their approach. Both intended to be comedies with heartfelt messages at the core, and both of them leaving you with a forlorn emptiness. If you absolutely love the book, maybe don't seek this out. If you want to see a big weird mess, then go for it.