377. The Ladies Man (1961)

Directed By Jerry Lewis

Synopsis

Herbert H. Heebert graduates and in the same day has his heart broken. From then on he decided to forsake women. Then he gets a job at a all women boarding house! Oh the hilarity!

Review

Well there isn't much of a plot to speak of here. The whole film consists of a sequence of situations slightly united by plot with a kind of romance side-plot which is never really developed. That said there are plenty of interesting things here.

Jerry Lewis is both the best and worse thing about this film, the bad is his acting which is just too much over the top to actually be funny, the faces he pulls, his histrionics etc. are just too forced. The great thing about Jerry here is his job as director, he is a pretty good director there are several sequences which are amazingly well made.

An example of these sequences is near the beginning of the film where the girls wake up in the house and all the movement is done to music, the way the house is cut away to show all the rooms makes it almost theatrical but also always keeps you aware of the artificiality of what you are watching, but in a good way. The entrance of a TV crew in the house actually seems to break the fourth wall as the cameras are placed beyond the house where the actual cameras to film the film would be. And then there is the great Miss Cartilage scene, which is funny in its surrealness. If only Jerry hadn't acted in the film...

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

It was released on June 28, 1961 by Paramount.

Great Sequence which I can only find dubbed in Spanish! Why do you people keep dubbing crap, can't you read subtitles?: