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The linchpin of Donner's original is at once dispensed with, Swinging London is a closed nightclub, Salt (Sammy Davis Jr.) and Pepper (Peter Lawford) face fines and jail time. A fleck of Dumas has the aristocratic twin brother impersonated following his assassination by a ring of diamond smugglers, a chance for Lawford to not just play Dean Martin but send up his own posh persona. The bereft partner tags along to the castle "because I just gotta find out what makes that head turn around," his mourning melts into absolute glee upon discovery of the masquerade, "oooooh, is he gonna get his now!" Jerry Lewis behind the camera "visible nowhere, present everywhere" like Flaubert's notion of the ideal author, even with Davis playing him as surely as Sophia Loren played her A Countess from Hong Kong director. One Gothic portal conceals a modernist pad in DeLuxe yellow and purple, another towers like Kubrick's monolith to reveal a bed soft like quicksand. (The library comes equipped with a secret passageway into a Hammer movie, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and all.) Flowers wilt and whiskers sprout as the old butler takes his time, a sneeze from snuff blows down a roomful of bluebloods, quintessential Lewis short-circuits. "Where Do I Go From Here" on a stairwell for an audience of oil portraits, "When the Feeling Hits You" at a costume party where "The Chocolate Dandy" reigns. "You really took me through some changes, pally." The foxhunt from Marnie takes a turn into covered wagons and bullets and arrows, "don't tell me they're making blasted Westerns in England now!" The finale reiterates The Patsy and threatens another sequel. With Maggie Wright, Esther Anderson, John Wood, Dudley Sutton, Percy Herbert, Anthony Nicholls, Allan Cuthbertson, Edward Evans, and Leslie Sands.
--- Fernando F. Croce |