Le trouillard du Far-West

This is a great Martin and Lewis Comedy from 1956, which is the same year that they broke up as a Comedic Duo, and this film "Pardners," was the second to their last that was made. Jerry's father and Dean's father were the best of friends, and died together in the hopes of saving their land. And of course, the story picks up with the children fully grown and ready to go back get some justice in the western town in which they were both born. Dean has some great singing numbers in this film, and Jerry's special brand of physical comedy is very effective in a number of saloon fight scenes. A very entertaining comedy!

Here Martin and Lewis are descendants of previous ranch partners . Lewis raised by a wealthy mother : Agnes Morehead , who desires progressive wishes for her son, but the latter only wants to regain the familly , glory and and clean up the town from baddies . Lewis is especially a maladroit millionaire , who goes to the old West to learn to be a cowboy , there he meets the brave shooter Dean Martin - he produced uncredited the film as well - who wants to buy a prize cow. Meantime, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis shoot the works with laughter and ballets, ballads and beauties. Along the way, they confront a gang of bandits who currently take under siege the ranch and the town, and then , eventually , Lewis is appointed sheriff . The laughs are Louder! The songs are bigger ! They are at hands on the Trigger! .All hilarity breaks loose neath that old Western sky in the biggest fun round-up since Paleface ! . The biggest bestest funni3st most musical Western yet !

A nice spoof Western, it results to be a loose reboot of Norman Taurog's "Rhythm on the Range" made 20 years earlier with Bing Crosby. Stands out Jerry Lewis at his most worryingly infantile, giving overacting , mimic and lots of gesticulation , while Dean Martin singing catching songs in his usual style . However , the Martin and Lewis partnership was nearing breaking point on this ironical and fun Western . Here there is more singing than gunslinging but it turns out to be entertaining and amusing enough . Incredibly , this amiable enough romp was written by beststseller author Sidney Sheldon. Jerry Lewis at his best as a rich momma's boy , a millionaire son of a former rancher who's persuaded to go West once again by the saddle-happy of his father's old partner , Dean Martin, both of them giving very likable interpretations .There's also spectacular musical numbers with impressive choreography by prestigious chreographer Nick Castle , attractive musical score by Frank De Vol and colorful cinematography in Technicolor by Daniel L. Fapp

Great duo starring , Martin and Lewis , are well accompanied by a good cast , such as : two beautiful girls incarnated by Lori Nelson , Jackie Loughery , various familiar secondaries as Agnes Morehead, Jeff Morrow, Lon Chaney Jr , Lee Van Cleef , Bob Steele, Jack Elam, among others . The motion picture was decently directed by Norman Taurog . This craftsman was a fine Hollywood artisan with penchant for Musical and Comedy , though he also made other genres , such as : "Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Speedway , Toast of New Orleans, Presenting Lily Mars , Broadway Melody of 1940, Bundle of Joy, Girls Gils Girls , GI Blues , Blue Hawaii, Tickle me , Birds and the bees , Double Truble , Words and Music" , among others . Rating : 6.5/10 . The flick will appeal to spoof Western and Musical genre enthusiasts , as well as Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin fans .

I'd heard a lot of great things about the comedy pairing of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. I'd seen Jerry Lewis in some other films before this (such as "The Nutty Professor" and "Rock-A-Bye-Baby") where he didn't really stand out as being a comedy legend, if anything he just seemed really annoying at points.

However I wasn't going to let that get in the way of enjoying what I had heard was a great double act.

But... this movie kind of sucked.

The most important thing that a comedy needs is to be funny, and unfortunately this doesn't quite hit the right mark. Jerry Lewis screaming and whining in that voice of his gets irritating after a while, and pairing him with the rather subdued and (in my opinion anyway) boring Dean Martin doesn't help as there's no one around to rein him in.

The story of this film feels like it was thought up five minuted before shooting began. It's the standard "there's a new sheriff in town and some criminals are trying to get rid of him" state of affairs that we've all seen about one hundred times before. However I will give the writers some credit as they did try to add a little twist to it, but ultimately it doesn't work because you don't really care about what's happening.

There's also this weird thing about an inter-generational family war which means that Dean Martin's character (a cowboy) and Jerry Lewis' character (a spoiled socialite who has always dreamed of being a cowboy) have to team up to stop the bad guys who are... doing something bad.

However this just means that it takes about 40 minutes for the two main characters to team up which means the rest of the movie feels incredibly rushed, so I wish they'd structured the movie better in that regard.

Oh yeah, also it's a musical? That was something I only figured out about 30 minutes in, which is when the first musical number appears. I can't actually remember any other songs after that though, so maybe there was only one? Either way, it was unnecessary and pointless and only served to waste time.

Overall, this movie was a pretty big disappointment, but it wasn't completely awful. Hopefully my future attempts to watch some Lewis and Martin will yield greater results.

Pardners is the 15th of the 16 feature length pictures that Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis made together. It'a a reworking of the 1936 Bing Crosby film, Rhythm On The Range, which just like this remake was directed by Norman Taurog. Plot sees the comedy duo playing sons of one time wild west partners. Brought together by accident 25 years later, the boys head out west and get into all sorts of scrapes; with Jerry even becoming sheriff! It was inevitable that Martin & Lewis would end up out west playing cowboys since all the comedy duos do it. The timing here was perfect since the 50s was the most prolific decade for the genre. On the list of their collaborations Pardners probably sits some where in the middle, it's a safe mix of songs and buffoonery, with pretty girls represented by Jackie Loughery & Lori Nelson. It's a VistaVision/Technicolor production and songs featured are "Me 'n You 'n the Moon," "The Wind! The Wind!" "Buckskin Beauty" and "Pardners," (music by Jimmy Van Heusen, lyrics by Sammy Cahn).

Safe & colourful comedy fare for fans of the successful duo. 7/10

Martin and Lewis are seen as old men in the beginning of the film.They are these ranch partners who are brutally murdered.Their sons ought to revenge for their death.In 1910 their sons are fully grown men, at least Martin's character Slim Mosely Jr. is.Lewis' Wade Kingsley Jr. is a rich momma's boy.But together they head back for the old west where they meet a gang of outlaws called "masked raiders".Norman Taurog is the director and Sidney Sheldon is behind the screenplay of Pardners (1956).It's a western comedy that stars the comedy team Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.Actually this was the second last picture they made together before their break-up.The collaboration between them still works even though this isn't the best picture they did together.But still pretty funny.Just watch Jerry Lewis learn how to be a real cowboy.And how he's in the saloon acting tougher than he actually is.The rest of the cast does good job, too.Lori Nelson plays Carol Kingsley.Agnes Moorehead is Mrs.Matilda Kingsley.Jeff Morrow plays Pete Rio and John Baragrey is Dan/Sam Hollis.Lon Chaney Jr. is Whitey.Lee Van Cleef plays Gus while Jack Elam is Pete.I became an admirer of Jerry Lewis movies, with and without Dean 10 years ago.They showed all these great and funny movies during the summer that made me laugh.Lewis and Martin worked great together.Just like Laurel and Hardy did, or Hope and Crosby and the Marx brothers.What ever happened to great comedy teams?