Slapstick Of Another Kind |
  • USA • 1982 • 82m •   • Directed by: Steven Paul. • Starring: Jerry Lewis, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman, John Abbott, Jim Backus, Samuel Fuller, Merv Griffin, Pat Morita, Virginia Graham, Ben Frank, Cheire Harris, Robert Hackman, Eugene Choy. • Music by: Michel Legrand, Morton Stevens.   A rich couple deemed to be the most beautiful of all the beautiful people by the press. This changes when Lutetia gives birth to oversize, deformed twins named Wilbur and Eliza. Unknown to them, the twins are really an alien brother-and-sister team implanted in Lutetia to solve the world's problems. When they are apart they are not much smarter than a potted plant, but together they are an intellectual force to be reckoned with. Their closeness is put to the test when a series of events threatens to keep the twins apart. Mixed in with all this is a miniaturized Chinese ambassador who needs the twins' help to make a deal for the sale of gravity.
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Review:
When I started watching it, I was shocked at what I saw. It was not funny. It seemed to be trying to be a comedy, but it wasn't. It was boring, unfunny, and so loony that it gave me a headache. You see, it is set in a future where the average IQ is 1, unruly children are sent to military school and there forced to read books with blank pages (if they look away, they get an electroshock), cars run on chicken manure, and the Chinese have all shrunk themselves to two inches tall and fly around in UFOs that look like fortune cookies. Adding to this craziness, Jerry Lewis and Madeline Kahn's characters, two giant, hideous twins, are born to to a wealthy (and supposedly beautiful) couple (also played by Lewis and Kahn), and turn out to be aliens who are idiots unless they literally put their heads together, in which case they are smarter than Albert Einstein. Did I mention that they are two feet tall when they are born? The plot is incoherent, there is no humor, and the characters make Dr. Insano look normal. The characters, especially Lewis and Kahn (as both the parents and children) have makeup jobs that make them look like they are made of wax.
As if it were not enough that Jerry Lewis and Madeline Kahn signed up for this piece of trash, the cast also includes Marty Feldman, Jim Backus, Merv Griffin, and narration by Orson Welles. Yes, that's right. Orson Welles, the man who made "Citizen Kane" and "The Third Man", and who created the "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast that terrified America, lent his golden voice to "Slapstick of Another Kind". As if it were not enough to disgrace the dignity of living actors, director Steven Paul (who went on to produce such masterpieces as "Ghost Rider", "Bratz", and "Baby Geniuses 2") went a step further - he put in a pair of Laurel and Hardy imitators.
The horrible attempts at humor make the movie even more unbearable than it already was. There were horribly unfunny jokes about the Chinese, castration, the economy, and too many other things to mention. I will admit that I did laugh once. There was a running joke about automobiles running on chicken manure because gasoline was about $10,000 a gallon. all throughout the movie, it was completely unfunny - except once. In one scene, a character asks the butler (played by Marty Feldman) where some other characters are. He replies: "They're at the Exxon chicken-s*** station". That's the only time in the movie that I laughed, and that joke probably only seemed funny because it the rest were so bad that it seemed funny in comparison.
After I finished watching the movie, I felt cheated out of my money. I had paid 50 cents for this??? I could have bought a root beer, a postage stamp, or a pint of chicken-s*** at Exxon. I've been gypped! I will give the movie some credit where it's due. Some of the special-effects work was decent, and....well, that's it.
Review by Hardwicke Benthow from the Internet Movie Database.
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