'THREE ON A COUCH'.......FOR HE'S A JERRY BAD FELLOW.......

Three On A Couch (1966)     Jerry Lewis will forever remain a problematic figure in cinema history.......

               In his long, successful career as a film comedian, you can find sporadic bursts of brilliance and at least one masterpiece, "The Nutty Professor",

               That's the movie in which Lewis perfectly displayed the war of his two personas......the spindly, squeaking lovable idiot-clown (Prof. Kelp) and the slick, cold-hearted Hollywood hipster (Buddy Love)........

               In real life, Buddy Love finally won the battle for Lewis's heart and soul.......he aged into Buddy and it wasn't a pretty sight.......in interviews and public appearances, Lewis always revealed himself as an embittered, angry, mean spirited individual, his humanity drained away by a lifetime of show business hard knocks

                 The mid-1960's Lewis found himself at a peculiar crossroad. Cut loose from his long stay at Paramount, he'd already worn out his juvenile "kid" character.......he looked too old for it and audiences were tired of the character anyway......

                 For "Three On A Couch", Lewis boldly tried out his late-night talk show persona.....a uneven mixture of a rational adult leading man, an awkward goofball and and the oily-haired, arrogant, booze 'n cigarette addicted Buddy Love........

                  Watching Lewis slip in and out of these three separate entities is a dizzying sight to behold, sometimes performed in mid-dialogue......

                   In "Three On A Couch", he plays a struggling artist who's won a commission to paint a mural in Paris.  But his dreams of honeymooning in France with his psychiatrist fiance (Janet Leigh) are dashed. Leigh won't leave the states while tending to the neuroses of three women patients (Mary Ann Mobley, Gila Golan, Leslie Parrish).......all young girls nursing deep issues about connecting with men.

                  Now comes the plot engine: Lewis and his best friend (James Best) concoct an ambitiously lunatic plan - where Lewis impersonates three separate potential boyfriends for each of the three girls. (An athlete for fitness fiend Mobley, a drawling cowboy for Western-obsessed Golan and a nerdy Entomologist for nature-loving Parrish)

                    Lewis spins no comic gold from this exhausting ruse.  He makes half-hearted, lazy stabs at portraying the boyfriends.....as well as the 'bonus' drag character, the entomologist's sister. The slapstick sight gags that accompany these episodes play like bad outtakes from 'The Nutty Professor'

                    The film does come alive and engage Lewis's filmmaking skill during its climactic, signature set-piece - at a ridiculously mobbed farewell office party for Leigh.  An ever frenzied Lewis realizes Mobley, Golan and Parrish are all in attendance,.......and his desperate, stymied attempts to  escape via the elevators are staged with precise comic timing.

                    All ends well for the story's characters, but no so much for Lewis himself......the film had little appeal for either adults or the family crowd that used to serve as the actor's prime demographic.  Nobody could really get a handle on this new, more mature version of Lewis......who comes off as needy, thoughtless, selfish......and not very funny.....

                   ..........much like the real Lewis.

                   A tireless, unstoppable performer, Lewis soldiered on through decades more of films and TV appearances......(and those video playback monitors that today's film directors  spend their time hunched over to check their shots were Lewis's idea)......and "The Nutty Professor" still stands as his very own 'Citizen Kane'........

                      But sorry to say, no one's going to remember "Three On A Couch" all that much. We've already begun to forget about it......1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2)