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Too much of everything

Simply Perfect

I wanted to but couldn't!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I remember seeing this move in it's original rum in the Central Square Theatre when I was a kid, but I read the play years later in my high school library in a book of plays from that year.I still remember Fred Clark as the Dad whom I knew from TV shows like The Burns and Allen Show. There where many sight gags in the movie which made me laugh uproariously at the time, and I remember sharing many scenes to old friends in the projects just afterwards.One I remember particularly was when Kreton (Lewis) played some bongos without touching them as the drummer(Buddy Rich, whom I didn't know THEN) angrily played the drum.I also remember Joan Blackman's boyfriend as Earl Holliman. He was one of those who I knew better in television on a lot of westerns and an early Twilight Zone episode, and a character part in Forbidden Planet.Many actors I learned about much after the fact from TV versions or reruns.I loved this movie then, and I love it even more now.I still don't understand or get those who hate Jerry Lewis in films, but I certainly understand those who didn't like him as a person.Having met him one time in a local TV Show when I brought him a portrait I had done, he didn't look at me much as he told me his wife took those. Her name was Patty and she was wonderful though, as she loved my drawing and thanked me profusely. She even introduced me to her son, whom I believe is now working for Jerry's business answering fan mail.I think this is one of his best, and it only gets better with each viewing. I don't think Gore Vidal's play would work since it was more of a satire of the McCarthy hearings, and wouldn't hold as well as this movie.

I didn't know this movie exists, so I'm very surprised, because as a boy I just loved Jerry Lewis. Long time I wished he would come to my birthday party. Once, in my naivety, I even called Paramount Pictures and asked to talk to Jerry. He wasn't there, they said.Some people commented, Gore Vidal wasn't happy with Jerry Lewis playing the main character. I totally disagree: Jerry is trying very hard to save a script that simply isn't funny! Yes, unfortunately this is a very unfunny comedy, but the little funny moments come all from Jerry. Actually I think it was a mistake that Jerry accepted to play in this movie, because this story is too silly even by Jerry Lewis' standards! So, watch it as a Jerry's rarity and try to enjoy it as such.

Back in 1955 Gore Vidal wrote a television play that later went to Broadway for 388 performances and starred Cyril Ritchard and Eddie Mayehoff. It was meant to be a satire on McCarthyism with an alien miscalculating a visit to Earth's American Civil War and arriving in Virginia a century later. So what must he have thought when his Broadway play wound up a vehicle for Jerry Lewis. Not that it's a bad Jerry Lewis, not his best to be sure, but surely not what Vidal intended.Jerry plays a most innocent alien with powers akin to what Ray Walston had in my favorite Martian. His people from way the other side of the galaxy have progressed to not only having powers beyond mortal men, but have dispensed with emotions. His people like his mentor John Williams are just below the Organians from Star Trek in that they still have corporeal bodies. Jerry wants to feel some earth like experiences so Williams gives him a chance.He experiences emotions all right, but a little too much for one Visit To A Small Planet. How he copes with Earth and its Earthlings is for you watch the film for.I can see that the characters that are played by the cynical Fred Clark and the excitable and paranoid Gale Gordon might have made great counterpoints for satire. But Jerry Lewis never has done satire and I doubt at his age he'll try it. Lee Patrick plays a role modeled on what she did as Leo G. Carroll's wife in the television version of Topper.It's jealousy that does Jerry in, mainly the jealousy that Earl Holliman feels as his girl and Clark and Patrick's daughter Joan Blackman starts taking an interest in their outer space visitor. Truth be told I can't see what Blackman sees in Holliman's lunkhead character. Holliman must have felt ridiculous doing the part.Best sequence in the film is Lewis and Blackman's visit to a beatnik joint and the impression he makes on all those cool cats. You'll get a chance to see ace drummer Buddy Rich in that scene and that should never be passed up.Visit To A Small Planet is a decent enough Jerry Lewis film, but far from whatever Gore Vidal had in mind.

Film version of Gore Vidal's stage hit was later re-made as TV's Mork and Mindy. UFO movies in the 50's and early 60's usually dealt with unfriendly, intellectually superior aliens out to kill helpless and somewhat naive humans. Then comes Jerry Lewis as a friendly, intellectually lacking alien who is out to study the "human condition." Most of the gags have been used and reused again on countless sitcoms but they are done well. Great character actors give hilarious supporting performances. Supposedly Gore Vidal was not happy with this version of his play. I've seen Vidal on TV many times over the years and never once ever seen him laugh or smile so maybe he has a different definition of comedy than the rest of the planet.