Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Spikeopath A loose remake of Preston Sturges' wonderful The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Rock-a-Bye Baby is safe entertainment for the Jerry Lewis fans. Here he plays Clayton Poole, a small town guy whose childhood sweetheart, Carla Naples (Marilyn Maxwell) is now a big film star. When she finds she is pregnant, the problems it will cause her career prompts her to coerce Clayton into looking after what turns out to be triplets! Much prat-falling and high energy chaos ensues.As befitting the Tashlin/Lewis combination, it's all very cartoonish in visual presentation. Narratively outside of Lewis' mad-cap rearing of the babies, there's a running thread of Carla's sister, Sandra (Connie Stevens), being hopelessly in love with Clayton - who of course has no idea, while the sentimental strings are pulled as Clayton fights to not lose the kids to a shifty legal guardian.The musical numbers start to grate on the nerves after a bit, with them feeling like attempts to show off something that isn't there, and the running time is too long to sustain this type of comedy. But once a Lewis fan then always a Lewis fan, with that in mind Rock-a- Bye Baby still has enough fun and frothery to make it above average entertainment. 6.5/10

Hitchcoc For the most part I find Jerry Lewis insufferable. Here the plot takes over and he manages quite well. Through a series of circumstances he ends up taking care of a set of triplet girls. Much of the comedy comes, of course, from Lewis's pratfalls and lack of understanding about raising children. It is a good vehicle for his brand of humor and he is charming and humbled by his circumstances. Of course, to the outside observers, he is incompetent and potentially dangerous. A woman decides to go to court to have the girls taken from him, and we get the classic treatment of a man who knows love in his heart. There always seems to be a villain out there ready to swoop in. Anyway, a lightweight, uneven presentation.

tavm Before I review this Jerry Lewis movie, let me just mention a couple of players from previous films he made with Dean Martin: Hans Conried plays his boss, Mr. Wright, and Mary Treen plays a nurse. Okay, with that out of the way, I'll just say this was quite a change of pace for Lewis since for one thing, there's no role that would have been played by Martin since Jer is truly the whole show here. Also, with him having to take care of babies that happen to be sired by former girlfriend Carla Naples (Marilyn Maxwell), his shtick is not-so-frantic when he's on screen with them. Helping him is Carla's father (Salvatore Baccaloni) and her sister Sandy (Connie Stevens) who has a crush on Clayton Poole (Jer's character). Oh, and Carla's a movie star so there's also an agent (Reginald Gardiner) on hand. And one more thing: Jerry sings some good songs, including a duet with Mr. Baccaloni, in his own normal voice and he's as good as Dean would have been if he warbled them. He also sings with his son Gary, who's underage here and years from his fame with the Playboys, in a sequence mixing present with flashback as Gary plays his father when his age. Reportedly, Jerry's father Danny also appears though I didn't recognize anyone with the family resemblance. No matter as for the most part, I really enjoyed this movie except whenever Lewis did a couple of Asian gibberish that fell in the stereotypical trap. Oh, and Connie was also lovely when she sang. Okay, I've said enough so on that note, I highly recommend Rock-a-Bye Baby. Kudos to writer/director Frank Tashlin too. One more thing, you'll be amazed when you see the picture of the bullfighter Carla was married to when she had her triplets!

ggfish Saw this film in its original release and later on some television re-runs. I like the film because it allows Jerry to face the situations that make for a movie that is a lot of fun. He is called upon to watch twin babies of a girl he thinks he is in love with who is a movie star, so while she goes all over the world filming he gets a crash course in baby rearing. Connie Stevens at her best is also along as a girl who really likes him. Some of the moves she put on him are quite risque for the 50's. Jerry does it all in this film. I like this period of his career after he broke up with Dean Martin. He made some great films until he transferred to Columbia. He seemed to get too much control of what he did and most of these films are quite unfunny. The wonderful Paramount's including this film, Who's Minding the Store, and his best in my opinion The Nutty Professor show him in his heyday. It's hard to imagine a theater full of families laughing so hard but I assure you they did, I was there.