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You can fact-check a legacy, but you can’t fact-check a legend. So, while the critical record books regard the considerable Jerry Lewis oeuvre dismissively -- the French like him, goes the cliché -- the viewer is left to wonder: Why was Lewis such a star? All the answer anyone needs can be found in his masterwork, The Nutty Professor (Docteur Jerry et Mister Love, to its most ardent fans). At No. 99, it just made the American Film Institute's list of the 100 funniest films of all time. Lewis stars as Professor Kelp (the model for Professor Frink on The Simpsons). Accident-prone, socially awkward, and repressed, Kelp creates a formula that hideously unleashes his lounge-lizard alter ego, the supremely arrogant Buddy Love, who wows the kids at the Purple Pit night spot ("one of the great swingers of all time") and romances student Stella Purdy (the luscious Stella Stevens). While Eddie Murphy played Love for laughs in his more mean-spirited remake, Lewis has nothing to Hyde as the monstrous Buddy ("Here you are, baby," he romances Stella. "Take this, wipe the lipstick off, slide over here next to me, and let's get started"). This special edition boasts a pristine transfer that does justice to the hallucinatory color design. Lewis's informal commentary with Steve Lawrence is welcome but something of a missed opportunity (he does not address long-held speculations that Buddy was his malevolent take on former partner Dean Martin), and a few of the bloopers seem to show Lewis getting his Love on with crew members. If you're going to own one Jerry Lewis film, The Nutty Professor makes the grade. Donald Liebenson

All Movie Guide

Professor Julius F. Kelp (Jerry Lewis) is an addle-brained, absent-minded chemistry instructor always incurring the wrath of the university administration by continually blowing up the classroom laboratory. The shy guy has his eyes on the student body of Stella (Stella Stevens). When a football-playing bully humiliates him, Kelp tries to concoct a chemical to help him gain physical strength and stature. The potion turns him into the handsome, hard-edged nightclub singer named Buddy Love. The mild-mannered professor's alter ego becomes a self-absorbed campus favorite at the Purple Pit, a hangout for hip cats and kittens. Stella falls for the enigmatic entertainer who wows the crowd with his jazzy, breezy delivery and cool demeanor. Buddy mixes it up with the bartender (Buddy Lester), who is instructed on how to mix the latest drinks by the professor-turned-party animal. The drawback of the potion is that it wears off at the most embarrassing an inopportune times for Buddy, turning him back into the helpless Kelp. Buddy performs at the annual student dance, and while on the dais, the elixir starts to wear off. The students and staff watch in amazement as he changes back into the professor. He gives an impassioned plea that people must learn to like themselves before others can like them in return. Stella still wants to be the teacher's pet, and the two make future plans together. Dan Pavlides

Product Details

• UPC: 097360563641
• Source: PARAMOUNT
• Region Code: 1
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Editions: Special Edition
• Time: 1:47:00
• Sales Rank: 5,487

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