Hardly Working (USA, 1981) 89 min color DIR: Jerry Lewis. PROD: Mickey Blowitz, Igo Kantor, James J. McNamara. MUSIC: Morton Stevens. DOP: James Pergola.SCR: Michael Janover, Jerry Lewis. CAST: Jerry Lewis, Susan Oliver, Roger C. Carmel, Deanna Lund, Harold J. Stone, Buddy Lester, Billy Barty. (20th Century Fox)
This feature is classic Jerry Lewis. That is to say, it is alternately brilliant, annoying, tiresome and amazing. I love that surrealist phrase: “Love sets its throne in the house of excrement.” In other words, one must go through a great ordeal in order to find true beauty. That is what it’s like to view this movie. The tolerant are rewarded. Jerry plays a circus clown (a nod to his unfinished The Day the Clown Cried, perhaps?) who is suddenly out of a job. So he moves in with his sister (Susan Oliver, from The Disorderly Orderly) and her irate husband (played by Roger C. Carmel, Harry Mudd from Star Trek!), and for next half of the film, there is a perpetual rhythm of Susan calling up a friend or relative to pull some strings getting Jerry a job, which he screws up at, and she makes a call to someone else. Best are the scenes in which Jerry causes havoc at a service station, and because it’s 1981, there is the inevitable disco sequence as well. Finally, he lands a job as a mailman and he is put through the task of the quality control managers. Best are the brilliant, surreal sight gags, such as when a woman offers Jerry a cold beer, she calls in the Carlsberg team of horses! Also, this film has the gentle command of Jacques Tati, as its loose framing captures all the chaos that Jerry effortlessly creates around him. Like Tati, Keaton or Chaplin, Jerry Lewis is a master of single-shot comedy set pieces. Interestingly, this film also retains the brightly-lit, gauzy 1960s look of all the pictures he made at Paramount during his tenure as actor-director. This is perhaps another reason why this film didn’t make much money– in 1981, this looked like a movie from another time.
Originally published in Vol. #1, Issue #7, 2002. As of this writing, the film still hasn’t had a DVD or Blu-ray release, so hold onto that VHS!
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.