The Jerry Lewis (solo) movie formula was a rather awkward mix of sticky romantic sentiment and wildly elaborate and catastrophic comic ballets and I have often wondered who Jerry himself thought was his target audience. His anarchic, destructive comedy seems aimed straight at 12 year old boys who would be little interested in icky girls, yet there was always a central romantic subplot. And the date crowd would have found his romantic chemistry with his female co-stars lacking and the overall atmosphere rather contrived and juvenile. Anyway, here Jerry does a spin on Cinderella, with Ed Wynn as his Fairy Godfather who uses wizardry to put the bungling Jerry in the path of a European princess. We all know how the story ends, but the difference here is that along the way, the princess has to wade through a succession of truly destructive comic disasters. I wondered why she stuck around with this guy all the way to the end. Any well-bred woman of her class would have gone to take a rest in Monte Carlo after the first one. Yet, contrived and formulaic as it is, the movie manages to still entertain almost 50 years later, largely on the strength of Jerry's comic and cinematic inventiveness. He was a master at staging destructive comedy sequences with few rivals at this. There are worse ways to spend 90 minutes.
Review of Cinderfella
