Interesteg What makes it different from others?

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

GarnettTeenage The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

FrogGlace In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Jeff Sultanof This is a very strange, frustrating movie that is too long, too diffuse, and at least for me, was difficult to sit through. No wonder audiences were baffled.The fact that it is a drama and was marketed as a comedy was a major mistake, but understandable given that Hollywood Pictures didn't know what to do with this.At the same time, it is a curiosity that does not deserve to be totally forgotten, particularly because of the strong acting. Caron and Lee Evans are excellent. But for me, this is one of Jerry Lewis' finest hours. For someone who many feel is just an out-of-control comedian, his work here is very much worth seeing. It's a pity he didn't do more of this kind of thing. Hopefully he still will (his performance in a segment of Law and Order is just amazing).Maybe you will like it better than I did.

Sardony Widely unknown gem that explores the source of comedy. Oliver Platt plays the unfunny son (Tommy) of an enormously successful comedian played by Jerry Lewis (George). Tommy, after a tragic debut of his stand-up comedy act in Las Vegas, goes back to his birth hometown in England in search of what is funny. In England, Tommy discovers aging vaudevillians and their quirky acts, one of which he recognizes. He then explores the family who perform this familiar act, finding more than comedy.While the film's subplot about a mystical eastern powder smuggled in large wax eggs at first appears better edited out, it provides a tenuously apt metaphor.The greatest part of this charming story comes from learning about the family and their history. And we learn of the tragedy and pathos deep within their comedy.I've always firmly believed the old tenet that the best comedy has threads of tragedy (or menace) in it. And in England, failed comic Tommy discovers this as well. As Tommy, Oliver Platt shows his own pathos from the start and is remarkable. The rest of the cast is a marvel: Leslie Caron is absolutely gorgeous, especially in her man's shirt, untucked, singing a cabaret song. The procession of old vaudevillians are a delight in a montage, and Freddie Davies and George Carl as an aging brother act are a revelation, a beacon illuminating the forgotten immense talent of days gone by. But the film belongs to the remarkable talents of young Lee Evans as the perhaps dimwitted son Jack. Here, we see in Evans, and in his character, a source of comedy so organic and abundant that Jim Carrey and his characters now look utterly forced and sham. And it's a shame that Evans is not as well known worldwide as Carrey; this fact being another of comedy's tragedies. Oddly, or aptly, Jerry Lewis plays one of the most serious characters in the film because he has to confront and admit the source of his own comedy. To the Jerry Lewis-phobic audience, fear not: he is actually very good here, probably because he largely, generously, takes a back seat to the more central characters. In Hitchcock parlance, Lewis' character is something of the "MacGuffin" that drives the larger story, and Lewis appears to understand this.The style of direction is quirky, showing much charm in the old seaside town in England that was, in some long ago day (when the sun seemed to shine every day), a center for quality vaudeville. And the viewer gets to delight in two hours' evidence of what Platt's character believes: that (in my favorite line of the film), "...all the best things in life belong to the past." Overall, hardly a perfect film. Yet it's one that stays with you. There's much love, charm and laughs in this work that may leave you feeling compelled to add to your list of all-time favorites.

FlorianSchirner After reading most of the comments on this film, I feel relieved. When I saw it the first time in cinema, I really liked it, so I persuaded some friends o see it too. They were disappointed. All others I talked to about this film were not liking it too. I thought I may be the only one to find it a brilliant, deep movie but here I find more of my kind.What makes the movie so outstanding in my opinion, is the fact that it is none of Hollywood's favourite genres...in fact it can't even be categorized to one genre or two. Adding to it there is no small criticism about today's comedy and entertainment culture and how our modern society treats people not fitting in so well.All this is wrapped in a more than bizarre story about some mystic elixir hidden in wax eggs,french mariners, American comedians, family secrets, a long lost glamorous time of vaudevillian entertainment and two guys on the search of their role in life.One is Tommy Fawkes (Oliver Platt) the rising star of stand up comedy, son of a comedy great. Overcome with self doubt and after getting his spotlight stolen by his father, he begins looking for the heart of comedy in Blackpool, England. Many may not know this, but Blackpool, like Brighton, was once the center of cabaret and varieté culture in England. Platt delivers a great performance (I should say as often, because that he does) as the self-doubting comedian, who thinks he cannot be funny anymore.But what he lacks in comedian talent, he has in social talent. He is a natural leader and charismatic person.Then there is Jack, a guy who is born to a family of entertainers, too. He is a natural comedian, in such an extreme that he cannot interact with society on a normal level. He has somewhat of a dark past, but that gets apparent during the movie. Jack is played by Lee Evans, and this boy is FABULOUS! Look at his Radioman performance and tell me you did not laugh...i call you a liar.Both actors are surrounded by a more than strong supporting cast including Jerry Lewis, Leslie Caron and Oliver Reed.Together with its almost hauntingly sublime and beautiful cinematography this film becomes a very clever and deep movie about character development.My advice: Rent it, see it and make your own opinion. You may be disappointed, since this is not a movie for everyone. But if you like it, you will appreciate it the more.

sarahcyn Not really a comedy - more a surreal, sometimes weirdly comic piece about comedians, about families, about the awfulness of having a famous father, about genius, about the problem of what makes a comic funny, about the sublime sadness of failure. Lee Evans is absolutely haunting as the tortured comic genius, the natural comic who is so purely a comedian that he can barely communicate except in gags, yet who will never be allowed to perform in public because of his dark past. Leslie Caron is heart-rending as his mother, a brave, faded French beauty stranded for ever singing mildly risque songs in Blackpool pubs, and their tender scenes together are for me the best thing in the whole film.The whole cast is incredible...right down to Oliver Reed camping it up gloriously in a bizarre sub-plot which at first I thought might be part of the Evans' character's fevered imagination. It is a movie absolutely crammed with magic but in one of my favourite scenes, Oliver Platt arrives in Blackpool and instantly sees it peopled with characters from Donald McGill postcards - fat ladies, saucy girls with flouncy skirts, burly men. The ending is a bit wonky and looks to my eye to have been changed from a tragic one to a "happy" one to please audiences. In the two opening sequences, both Evans and Platt utter the words "I'm going to die" in very different circumstances, and mean very different things, and other variations on the theme of death and laughter follow - all this seemed to be pointing down a much darker alleyway than the one we got. Doesn't matter, though. Still a great movie.