There’s quite a serious subtext to this comedy: Jerry Lewis lives very much under the thumb of his former-sporting-hero father (Eddie Mayehoff), who can’t understand why his son doesn’t like athletics and or want to attend his old college. Although a shrink warns him to back off, dad goes ahead and enlists his son in his old alma mata, and what’s more offers to pay a high school sporting hero (Dean Martin – that’s right, Dean and Jerry play high school students) to look after his kid and turn him into a man.
It’s oddly constructed –you think they’d want to get to college as soon as possible, but it takes 50 minutes. And a plot about a girl pretending to like Lewis when she really loves Dean doesn’t start until 20 minutes before the end.
The biggest problem is that Mayehoff’s character really gets annoying after a while – he goes on and on about how disappointing Lewis is and how he devoted so much time, and it just becomes unpleasant. The ending has him learn how to play football well (not through any application of his brains, just practice and support from his friends) and he becomes hero for the game – are we supposed to feel good about this? What if Lewis had failed, and his dad had disowned him? Dad is a complete prick. What happened to Lewis wanting to study to be a vet?
The support cast includes Polly Bergen, who was in At War with the Army (she pops up at the beginning as Martin’s high school girlfriend then disappears for most of the movie), and Marion Marshall (who was in Sailor Beware).
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