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"All American movies need a hero... so we're stuck with these." The location is a sanitarium, the comic as mixed-up humanitarian with "sympathy pains" is the theme, set up by Frank Tashlin and clowned by Jerry Lewis in their final collaboration. The health system is a business and the venal hospital executive (Everett Sloane) quotes research showing showbiz types as "nuttier than those in government," the fluent flow of slapstick demonstrates by feeding a brassy diva (Barbara Nichols) to a defective bed. Meanwhile, Lewis absorbs the symptoms of the hypochondriac yenta (Alice Pearce), whose cheerfully graphic descriptions of her leaky innards send the orderly into agonized contortions ("Oh bile, oh bile!"). The snowy flickering of a TV screen yields to a blizzard, a stethoscope finds Big Ben chimes inside the forlorn hero's chest, the massage-room routine from Artists and Models is revisited with a patient's body cast, which rolls down a hill and into a characteristic punchline perdu. The romantic dilemma with the genial nurse (Karen Sharpe) and the suicidal former cheerleader (Susan Oliver) is a Hitchcockian split of brunettes and blondes that introduces the most interesting character—as the furious object of desire, Oliver has her beauty disfigured by the greenish glow of an aquarium and spits out such venom at her assigned role ("The most popular girl in school... At least it looks pretty when it breaks up") that one regrets Tashlin never getting to direct Cameron Diaz. "The noble man of science" in his element, learning the hard way about the shattering effect a bite out of an apple can have on the quiet ward. The psychoanalysis comes amid a flurry of sparkling chaos, runaway gurneys and collapsing supermarket pyramids for the benefit of Zabriskie Point. With Glenda Farrell, Kathleen Freeman, Del Moore, and Jack E. Leonard.
--- Fernando F. Croce |