Touches You

People are voting emotionally.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

I like Jerry Lewis and I think some of his work is really good. But when I sat down to watch this movie, I could not get past the first ten minutes or so.First of all, the production is really, really sloppy. The soundtrack has lapses when there is no sound. The voice track does not match the image. Pieces are edited in without matching the action.It's okay for Jerry to do his schtick, but the same thing over and over? His verbal nonsequitors get old quickly.The gags are sometimes plugged into the plot haphazardly.The resulting film is amateurish. But I do like some of Jerry's work.

Anyway, here Jerry is at something close to his (solo) best as a jilted man who finds himself inadvertently at the beck and call of a house full of movie actress wannabes, and misadventures abound. The house itself was a huge sound stage set with the fourth wall cut away so that the camera could zoom in and around, capturing Lewis' trademark ballets of catastrophe to excellent effect. He really was a marvel at comedic staging and there is some great stuff here. Unfortunately, you also have to take the rest of the Lewis formula too - the sappy romantic sentimentality, the awkward chemistry with his female co-stars and the contrived love sub-plots with girls who ought to have had the good sense to run screaming for the opposite coast as soon as the first catastrophe ended. Honestly are we really supposed to buy the belief that love conquers even Jerry's level of incompetence? Anyway, this movie should be enjoyed for its merits, which are considerable for any fan of comedy cinema, while discreetly closing one eye to its contrivances.

As the reviewer said before me, this just wasn't funny. I had prepared a review of this film after seeing it last week on TCM, but I guess I was too harsh and they didn't post it, but I still want to share my thoughts, so if you all don't mind, I'll try to be kinder and gentler.I have always been (sort of) a Jerry Lewis fan, in fact when I was a small child, I really loved him, and I think that maybe, when I was maybe 10 or 12 years old, and saw a movie like this, I probably thought it was much funnier, than I do now, as a middle aged person. As I have stated in other reviews, I think that Jerry's films from this time frame where he was in complete control of the production suffered from that, because they focused too much on him, and his antics, and not the story per se. And as I stated, when you compare a film like this to one of the very good ones that were made back then (like the Nutty Professor), it just seems all the more a shame.Basically Jerry plays his "the little boy that never grew up" character, again, and here he finishes college I think but finds out his girl friend evidently found someone else, so he decides he hates girls now, and runs away west, looking for work, and wouldn't you know it the only job he can find is working at a (get ready for it) women's boarding house, that has, of course about 511 gorgeous girls running around. So for about 2 hours we have: Jerry making noises, Jerry making faces, Jerry destroying things, Jerrry making more faces, Jerry making more noises, etc. In fact, as far as "spoilers," I can't tell you how it ends, because I only made it halfway through.It was a shame how bad this movie was, truly truly awful.

THE LADIES' MAN (1961) ** Jerry Lewis (who wrote and directed as well) hijinks with our boy recently graduated from college and recently jilted romantically finds work as houseboy for a boarding house bountiful with a bevy of babes! The usual nuttiness with sight gags and slapstick in high manic style.