It is with productions like "The Bellboy" that Jerry Lewis earned more and more hostility in the States and made his eventual reputation in Europe (i.e France, of course). This movie is stuck in a continental divide, but also in a temporal one. I have no idea whether Lewis did actually grasp the ideas of surrealism or the absurd movement at the time, but it looks pretty much so. The man somehow managed to mix his usual desperately anarchic slapstick routines with a very clear sense of not making the innate tragedy of the matter an issue at all - only to disclaim at the end that the character shown in the picture might be your neigbour. The achievement here is that Lewis behaves like a lost circus clown throughout the major feature film - never allowing himself to get halfway sentimental or plot-oriented. He is illogic, destructive and spastic; and he makes the whole movie obey his zany rules, thus saving the Sennett/Roach school into a time when people were heavily reflecting on the opportunities of physical humour. Maybe it took the MelBrookses, the Abraham-Zuckers and the Farrellys to make that kind of unromantic comedy truly popular again way later, but here's someone who tried in 1960. Today, it looks like Jim Carrey taking over a Bunuel movie - and that's as silly as it gets.
Review of The Bellboy
