The Nutty Professor

Amusing and spasmodic comedy with the genius comic Jerry Lewis by relinquishing creative control and concentrating on the humor more than the fright , skilfully combining the entertainment with the amusement . To improve his social life, a nerdish , mild-mannered professor (Jerry Lewis who wrote seven scripts for the film by himself and two with Bill Richmond) drinks a potion that temporarily turns him into the handsome , but obnoxious, Buddy Love , a wicked impersonation of his old pal (though Lewis has repeatedly denied is a Dean Martin parody , but the proof is quite strong) .

Enjoyable film with characters genuine and sympathetic , it is plenty of humor , tongue-in-cheek , side-splitting sight gags and amusement . Jerry Lewis is top-notch playing a double role as the timid , meek professor turned into a dashing debonair , slim playboy type with an irresistible attraction . It was widely believed at the time that the Nutty Professor's sleazy alter ego, Buddy Love, was a satirical swipe at Jerry Lewis's longtime partner, Dean Martin . The picture results to be a parody and comic variation based on the classic novel ¨Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde¨ by Robert Louis Stevenson . According to one of the trailers for this film, Jerry Lewis urges you to see this picture from the beginning, on penalty of losing your popcorn privileges , this spoofs Alfred Hitchcock's dictum that Psycho had to be seen from the beginning and his insistence that no latecomers be seated . In the co-starring role stands out Stella Stevens , surely the most gorgeous girl any professor ever had . Furthermore , watch rapidly to Henry Gibson in his film debut , Richard Kiel , Celeste Yarnall , and William Smith . The motion picture was produced by , directed by , and starred by Jerry Lewis , at his best . Colorful and shimmer cinematography in Technicolor by Walter Kelley . Catching musical score by Walter Scharf , including various songs sung by Jerry Lewis and special intervention of Les Brown orchestra directed by Les Brown .

It's remade in 1996 as ¨Nutty professor¨ by Tom Shadyac with Jada Pinkett Smith and Edddie Murphy who takes a swig of his own secret formula and is transformed into the suave buddy ; and its sequel (2000) by Peter Segal again with Eddie Murphy and Janet Jackson .

Jerry Lewis's comic mash-up of Jekyll and Hyde, a weakling turning into an alpha male ala those old Charles Atlas ads, and the obnoxious, egotistical behavior of the ultra-cool. The latter is commonly thought to be shading his old partner Dean Martin, but I saw it more as Frank Sinatra, or a pastiche of the worst behavior of the Rat Pack, than Martin in particular. Regardless, it's an unpleasant character to watch, and while that's the whole point, it took away from my enjoyment a bit, even with the nice sentiment at the end.

With that said, Lewis is a funny guy, and it made me smile to see the nerdy professor bumbling around, sinking into the sofa at the dean's office, fumbling the pocket watch that blares out the Marines' Hymn into a fish tank, and having his arms stretched out while lifting weights. Meanwhile Stella Stevens brightens up every scene she's in, and oozes sex appeal in the outfits the professor imagines her in during a happy little montage. She wears an elegant evening gown, a very short tennis skirt, a red dress with a high slit up the leg, and a bathing suit, all while giving him various come-hither looks that steam him up. The romances that have her somehow first attracted to Buddy Love and then later the professor don't make a lot of sense, but she brings a welcome bit of light into the film. Overall, worth seeing.

On the Nutty Professor DVD extras, Jerry Lewis says that he had been "enthralled with Jekyll and Hyde" since he was a kid. So it's only logical that he'd long to create this "Jekyll and Hyde comedy/musical". Oddly, The Nutty Professor tends to be read as only a comedy, in the modern colloquial sense of that genre term, as "a film that's supposed to make you laugh", but there's much more to it than that, and more intended than that. Which is probably a good thing, because even though I didn't laugh out loud very frequently while watching The Nutty Professor, I did enjoy it quite a bit, despite the flaws.

Lewis--who also directs--plays Professor Julius Kelp, a bizarrely nerdy-but-stupid chemistry professor. He has a knack for conducting dangerous, unauthorized experiments in the presence of students. At the beginning of the film, he blows up his classroom yet again. On a later day, a football student who was denied permission to leave class early for football practice responds by stuffing Kelp into a shelf. Beautiful student Stella Purdy (Stella Stevens) feels sorry for Kelp and helps him unstuff himself. Stevens skillfully has the slightest gleam in her eye while doing this so that we can tell that Purdy has an attraction to the strange-looking professor.

Spurred on by the incident--with both the physical abuse and the physical attraction as motivators, Kelp decides to give himself a make over. He first tries his luck at the local gym. When that doesn't work out so well he puts his chemistry knowledge to use and hits upon a potion that produces a Jekyll & Hyde transformation. The Nutty Professor has Kelp trying to balance the two personalities, with the expected calamitous but humorous results.

Although Lewis' Hyde character, "Buddy Love", is often said to be a skewering of his early comedy partner and pal Dean Martin, Lewis claims this wasn't the case. Both the nerd and the debonair but sublimely obnoxious hipster were supposedly amalgamations of different people Lewis had encountered over the years. Still, the similarities to Martin are difficult to deny; perhaps the character was partially a subconscious parody of Martin.

In any event, Love is entertaining to watch--he's something like a glossy trainwreck. Or maybe like a suave Satan in a silk suit. Lewis makes both characters complex in their differences from their respective stereotypes. Kelp is the stereotypical "absent-minded professor", only the absent-minded professor is usually a wiz at his academic subject. Lewis paints Kelp as primarily a wiz at being a slightly sympathetic dork, where his cockeyed chemistry successes are more accidental. Love is the stereotypical overbearing but attractive-to-the-women brute, yet Lewis is quick to imbue him with an odd combination of pathos and flair, so that Love ends up being both more fragile and more talented/intelligent.

Some of the material employing both characters is quite funny, but Lewis dwells on humor no more than a whole gamut of modes and emotions, from fairly serious horror material during the slightly overlong initial Jekyll/Hyde transformation to poignantly sad, touching scenes showing the crack in the Love armor. To an extent, the Jekyll/Hyde theme permeates the film in its shifting tones.

One of those modes that works surprisingly well is the musical material. Lewis hired the superb Les Brown and other great jazz musicians to provide songs. Les Brown's "Band of Renown" even makes an on screen appearance, performing a couple songs at a college dance. Lewis isn't the greatest singer, but he does a passable job with an alluring rendition of "That Old Black Magic". There's also a great version of "Stella by Starlight" in the background of a couple scenes.

The performances are quite good. Both Stevens and Del Moore, as Dr. Hamius R. Warfield, the college dean, easily hold their own next to Lewis, who does a remarkable job with the transformations. He's helped a lot by W. Wallace Kelley's cinematography. Kelley had a more than respectable, varied background, including camera experience on a couple Alfred Hitchcock films--To Catch A Thief (1955) and Vertigo (1958)--and Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956). Kelley uses very subtle angle changes to make Kelp seem small and insignificant (aided by Lewis' physical contortions) while making Love seem like a big, macho guy.

The production design is also gorgeous. Lewis directs his crew to fill the film with bold, unusual color combinations--most overtly in the rainbow-colored paints on the lab floor during the first Jekyll/Hyde transformation, the nice overlaying of purples and reds in The Purple Pit club, and the great, unusual coordinations of Love's suits.

Whether you find The Nutty Professor hilarious or not, it has certainly been influential. Lewis considers this his best film. The American Film Institute placed The Nutty Professor at number ninety-nine on its list of the "100 Funniest American Films" ("100 Years/100 Laughs"). Both Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey have obviously been influenced by this film, as they have been by Lewis in general. And Andy Kaufman's disparate characters Latka Gravas (from 1978-1983's "Taxi") and Tony Clifton (a regular part of his live act) are direct parallels to Kelp and Love, even if Kaufman had other influences for those characters, as well.

The Nutty Professor is also a "message" film. The dual "morals" of the story, in addition to the less conspicuous subtexts dealing with personal identity, are to not be afraid to be your true self and to accept others for their true selves--to look deeper than the surface level.

Given such wide-ranging moods and aims, it's probably best to watch the film without genre expectations. That's not likely to make those averse to Lewis' shtick enjoy it any more, but for everyone else, The Nutty Professor is worth a look. It will surprise you with its diversity.

The original Jerry Lewis version of this movie is still the best one ever. Irregardless of the special effects employed in the Eddie Murphy version, or the novelty of him playing multiple characters at the same time, the original has something the copycat doesn't - Jerry Lewis, still one of the best comedians on the planet. Lewis doesn't need the power of special effects or multiple roles to fully convey the story here. How he transforms from a nerdy professor to a suave and sweet-talking singing/dancing/kissing Romeo is a sight to behold. He employs acting techiques which manage to convince us that these are 2 distinct people with distinct personalities and characters. No one can top Lewis in his prime, and this is one of better movies.

THE NUTTY PROFESSOR (1963) **** Jerry Lewis, Stella Stevens, Del Moore, Kathleen Freeman, Howard Morris. Jerry Lewis' comic masterpiece (which he also directed) adapts the Jekyll-Hyde story to tailor form-fitting to his loose frenetic talents and comes up with two memorable characters: feeble social outcast chemistry professor Dr. Julius Kelp all chipmunk-toothed geekiness and bad hair becomes lounge lizard, charming bully Buddy Love (some say he was inspired by Dean Martin, which Lewis steadfastedly denied). Funny, touching and out-there! Groovy, man, groovy!