Maybe rating this a little high, but this just really hit a nostalgia sweet spot for me. Feels like every other movie in the 90s used to just be 100 minutes long centered around a big likable star.
I miss those times. Really sad that this just got buried.
Frederick Wiseman really hooked me in with some of his more recent sprawling and long looks at various institutions, but as I've gone back through his filmography I've been liking the stuff from 30+ years ago even more. The observational and seemingly innocent style is still the same, but the editing in his earlier work just feels so much more like a damning indictment than an interested gaze. Maybe he is nicer toward his subjects now, or maybe the criticisms…
I tried with a few other Jerry Lewis movies and determined he wasn't for me, but recently heard a recommendation by some comedy nerds for this movie as a "gateway" into his career.
Happy to report that I thought this was a lot better than the other two I have tried out. Many of the best bits in the movie get into the realm of fantastical reality, and the movie seems to rely a whole lot more on people just…
