Jerry Lewis once played a Visitor from a Small Planet – here he’s an astronaut from Earth headed to the moon thirty years in the future. For most of this running time it’s a sort of sex comedy – he is sent up there as an experiment to have a married couple live up there in order to replace two male astronauts who’ve gone crazy. Only problem is, he doesn’t have a girlfriend – he eventually hooks up with Connie Stevens, who agrees to go along to with it so she can go on a mission but won’t sleep with him. While they are up on the moon they encounter some sex mad Russians (including Anita Ekberg) who sleep together even though they’re not married; Stevens gets jealous over Ekberg, etc, etc.
Stevens and Ekberg had been in Jerry Lewis films before to great effect so it’s good to see them again; Ekberg is sexy as ever and Stevens quite funny – even if she doesn’t have as distinct a character to play as in Rock a Bye Baby, she’s got a batty quality which works well with Lewis.
I enjoyed this movie more than I thought. It’s a bit of a mess and the humour tends to smut more than sexiness but always throws up something different: Jerry’s son sings the title song, Robert Morley is head of the space program, Brian Keith making a cameo as a general, the fact half of it is set on a space station on the moon gives it a different sort of atmosphere (more isolated). Some very funny bits like the two astronauts going mad, all the astronauts getting drunk on vodka, the pot shots at the military (who are sent up mercilessly), the race for the “moon baby”.
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