Lewis' fourth film as a director is a reworking of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde brought into the modern world by way of Lewis' cartoonish take on the institutions and social cultures of contemporary life. His Jekyll is nebbish college professor and chemist Julius Kelp, the child-man of his previous films grown up from boy to adult, no more capable of the social world but clearly educated and perhaps even brilliant. His adenoidal juvenile voice has tempered into something oddly lived in and the spasmodic, childlike body has slowed and slumped into a walking shrug, acknowledging his inability to take on the world on its own terms. Julius is smitten with Stella Purdy (Stella Stevens), a curvaceous co-ed who sits up front of every chemistry class and looks up wide-eyed at every lecture. It's not clear if she likes him, respects him, or just feels bad for him, but there is something about this harmless social grotesque that makes her care for his plight. Attraction is another matter, however, so Kelp goes on a self-improvement kick at Vic Tanney's gym (one of many glaring product placements in the film; Lewis was a pioneer in this aspect of production, a dubious achievement to be sure). When that fails to produce measurable results, he falls back on his specialty: better living through chemistry.
Where Stevenson's good doctor is a humanitarian and moralist who unleashes the suppressed id within as an experiment and gets addicted to the rush, Kelp's experiment is a bit more self-centered and pointedly directed. He concocts a formula specifically to transform him into his imagined ideal of what women want: the confident, popular, aggressive ladies' man that the shy, stammering, socially awkward Julius can never be. While the standard take in 1963 was that lounge lizard Buddy Love was a rather nasty satire of his former partner Dean Martin, most fans realize that Buddy is really Lewis' flip side writ big and pushed to extremes. This wannabe crooner and life of the party doesn't just need the spotlight, he demands it and rides roughshod over anyone who might challenge him. Buddy Love is a social sociopath, so self-absorbed and sexist and bullying that his instant popularity is part of the joke. Even Stella is befuddled by her attraction to him. Though she is too often reduced to wide-eyed, open-mouthed looks of surprise, curiosity and sheer fascination, she holds her own bantering with Buddy and calls out his arrogance and attitude, yet gives in to his every invitation for a date or a ride. Is there something else in the formula that lulls people into adoration? Or is it Lewis' own comment on the way the public willingly puts up with boorishness and a naked demand for attention as part of the pact with talent?
Lewis, who nearing 40 when he made The Nutty Professor, had been playing younger than his real age in every leading role since the fifties and even Julius comes off as a young teacher, the boy genius who graduated early and struggles to play the authority figure to his college students. But Lewis lets his age show in Buddy, which makes him even creepier. With his hair greased down, his face heavy with eyeliner and eyebrow pencil, and his face lined with age and covered in stubble and sweat, he's the thirtysomething crashing the college crowd. His outfits are so loud they drown out the rest of the candy-colored visual din of Lewis' sets, a glib show-off's idea of style and taste. Whether Lewis knew it or not, he was crafting a second alter ego, one where he could channel the less cute sides of his comic instincts. This is the version of himself he started to reveal in public in the seventies, playing his insult comedy as a schtick that he would dismiss with a goofy grin then slip right back into, and the side of Lewis that Martin Scorsese drew from for The King of Comedy's Jerry Langford. That transformation suggests that Buddy Love is less a caricature than the real id that Lewis suppressed in his spastic innocent act.
Where Lewis' films with directors Frank Tashlin and Norman Taurog drop the Kid into vaguely real-world settings, Lewis creates utterly artificial worlds for his own directorial efforts, cartoon incarnations that are already parodies of what they represent. The Purple Pit, the official college hotspot of The Nutty Professor, is a velvet bachelor pad fantasy gone haywire, the college classrooms and offices and labs are dollhouse versions with pastel walls and candy-colored props (the test tubes and vials filled with jelly bean liquids must have caused a national shortage for food coloring), and the costume design fills the frame with splashes of bright, bold colors, like flowers blooming in the midst of the film. Lewis is more conceptually inventive than he's often given credit for, sneaking in surreal gags between the buffoonery and crazy physical gags. His flashback to childhood is hilariously grotesque caricature that sneaks in a sense of self-image. The "chime" of his pocket watch is a surround sound audio blast. The classroom explosions of chemistry experiments gone wrong that almost get him fired are Three Stooges slapstick by way of cries of desperation.
The films that Lewis wrote, directed, and /or produced for himself were essentially showcases for gags and comic ingenuity, situations on which to hang a bunch of comic bits on. The Nutty Professor, which he co-wrote with regular collaborator Bill Richmond, is an exception in his directorial filmography, a story that intertwines the twin drives of Julius and Buddy and the uneasy partnership of the two. There's an evolution here, with Julius increasingly subservient to the needs of dominant Buddy and Buddy serving as the revenge of Julius, turning the girl that the professor could never get into his plaything and making a mockery of the college dean (Del Moore, hilarious), who is left pantsed and playing a Shakespeare monologue to an empty room in one scene. His need to keep bringing Buddy Love back is an addiction to feed the kind of adoration and attention that Kelp could never manage. Kelp is a far more self-aware figure than any role he played in any other of his self-produced pictures, and it makes him more vulnerable and even oddly admirable. Lewis' goofy dance while playing chaperone at the college prom, carried away by the toe-tapping tunes of the Les Brown Combo, is funny to be sure, but it's also relatable. Just because no one will dance with Julius doesn't mean the impulse isn't bursting to get out. Even if he isn't willing to admit to himself, his body can't help but let it all out. The comedy builds on previous bits and the comedy is in service to developing and illustrating the story. You don't find that kind of evolution in The Bellboy or The Ladies' Man. It helps make The Nutty Professor Lewis' comic masterpiece.
Paramount debuts The Nutty Professor on Blu-ray in a four-disc box set that offers two additional Lewis films on DVD and a bonus CD in addition to the supplements and other bonus goodies. The new Blu-ray edition is beautifully mastered with a clean, clear, sharp image and colors that pop, the way that Lewis intended. The film was originally mixed and released in mono and that track is included here along with a 5.1 DTS-HD remix that shows respectable restraint: no show-off effects here, just a subtle separation of effects in a soundtrack that remains largely centered.
New to disc is the 20-minute featurette "Jerry Lewis: No Apologies," catches up with Lewis at age 87, with new interviews discussing the origins and production of The Nutty Professor and clips of him discussing his life and career in front of audiences. He's mellower here than he's been in previous years, in part due to the effects of aging on his body (which he discusses at great length), and he comes off as genuinely appreciative of the audience that comes out to listen to him talk about his life and career, but age has not made him any more modest.
Carried over from the previous DVD "Special Edition" release in 2004 is commentary by Lewis and his friend Steve Lawrence (who comes off as a kind of sycophant or yes man, adding little to the conversation beyond a constant stream of praises), the 15-minute making-of featurette "Perfecting the Formula" (featuring interview clips with Lewis discussing creation of The Nutty Professor) and the 30-minute retrospective featurette "Jerry Lewis at Work" (with Lewis historian James Neibaur), an archival clip of Lewis at the dedication of a Julius Kelp figure at the Movieland Wax Museum, deleted scenes, bloopers, archival promos with Jerry Lewis and Stella Stevens, test footage, and the trailer.
Also featured are a DVD edition of The Nutty Professor and two bonus DVDs which are re-releases of films previously available as singles. Cinderfella (1960), which spins the Cinderella fairy tale into a Lewis vehicle with Ed Wynn as his red-nosed fairy godfather and Anna Maria Alberghetti as his Princess Charming, is directed and written by Frank Tashlin, the best of Lewis' directors and the filmmaker who most influenced his own directorial style. The Errand Boy (1961), which sets Lewis loose on a movie studio lot as a spy for the head of the studio, is directed by Lewis himself. Both films feature commentary by Lewis and Steve Lawrence. There's also a bonus CD of "Phoney Phone Calls," recordings of prank calls that Lewis made and recorded between 1959 and 1972 and originally released to disc in 2001.
The box also features booklets with reproductions of storyboards, a cutting script with Lewis' notes, and a recreation of his self-published illustrated "Instruction Book for Being a Person" that he wrote and handed out to the cast and production crew of The Nutty Professor, and "A Personal Message from Jerry Lewis" written for this release.
by Sean Axmaker
