Thanks for the memories!

Admirable film.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The idea of a rich man, rejected by the army as 4F, then creating his own military experience, has possibilities. It could be a funny movie.This wasn't. Lewis' vision of the comic bits has no sense of timing. It moves along at a snail's pace, and includes myriad supporting scenes that just aren't funny. Each scene has a punch line, but most of them were a waste of film. Evidently, firing a mortar and then blandly declaring "We just blew up a Texaco station" just doesn't pack the comedic punch it used to.Jerry stammering gibberish was barely tolerable in his early days. In this film, it just looks tired.While the film is set in 1943, hair styles, colloquial expressions, mores, costuming, and just about everything else are firmly rooted in the late 60s.To get picky, the freeze frame method of ending scenes, as used in this film, is just odd.I actually got pained looks from my wife when I held on past the first twenty minutes hoping that it would eventually get to the "good part". Twenty-two minutes after that I finally gave in and stopped watching this mess.

This movie is almost unwatchable. I'm not sure why it was made. The only motive that comes to mind is revenge, but against whom? Casting is a big issue. Jan Murray is a stand up comic who is about as funny as an influenza epidemic. The rest of the cast follows his suit. There is none of the Jerry Lewis comic genius in this film. Even when he's mugging and freaking out, there isn't the skilled comic reactions from the other actors. Kathleen Freeman could've done it, but she's wasted in this film.There's a real feeling of laziness. The main characters are wearing clothes from the sixties in a film about the forties. And ASCOT??? In 1943??? I know Lewis has forbidden the viewing of his holocaust movie, The Day the Clown Cried. I think this one belongs in that vault as well.

After Which Way To The Front was released Jerry Lewis ceased making films as a star attraction. With a few funny moments involved, there were more eggs laid at this film than a chicken farm on a slow day. It's not a horrible film but it's definitely not among Lewis's best and in the lower tier of his work.Jerry plays one of the richest men in the world who for some reason I can't fathom wants to serve in the ranks. So it rankles him that he's declared a 4-F something around the time that this film came out many young men would have sold their souls for. As he and three fellow 4-Fs Jan Murray, Steven Franken, and Dack Rambo sit and commiserate about their fate Lewis has a brainstorm. He's rich enough, he'll form his own army and equip it. I will say he designs some snazzy uniforms for his troops which also include his butler John Wood and his chauffeur Willie Davis of the Los Angeles Dodgers.Those flashback sequences involving Murray, Rambo, and Franken are the best part of the film. Even for an audience in the middle of the Vietnam War, those guys all have excellent reasons for wanting to leave their current situations. Unfortunately the rest of the film isn't as good. The guys train on Lewis's palatial estates, get the best chow any army ever had and then decide on their own mission which is based on Jerry Lewis's resemblance to Field Marshal Kesselring. If you believe their account they actually break the stalemate on the Italian front and later participate in the bomb plot against Hitler.Hitler was played by Sidney Miller and his scenes with Lewis as Kesselring are taken straight from The Great Dictator. I'm not sure Charlie Chaplin really liked this particular homage.A lot of World War II film clichés are dealt with here. The coda to this film with Lewis impersonating one of those bucktooth Japanese that were popular at the time I'm not sure was really needed. Nor was it all that funny. Jerry came up short with this film.

I had watched this as a kid but, not being much of a Jerry Lewis fan, I had completely forgotten it (not that it's in any way memorable). The film revolves around impersonation (which seems to be in the curriculum of every comic star!) - in this case a German officer - and, while not as bad as Leonard Maltin claims (awarding it a BOMB rating), it's not exactly classic stuff either - certainly leagues behind Chaplin's THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940), even if comparably narcissistic! Ironically, the scenes prior to the appearance of the would-be wacky General offer more felicities than the rather forced humor at Nazi expense! The film was really Lewis' last gasp during his heyday; in fact, this proved to be his last vehicle to be released for 10 years (it's painfully apparent here that his particular brand of foolishness wouldn't pass muster in the age of Mel Brooks and Woody Allen)!