Le fou de l'espace

Despite the consensus that Jerry Lewis hasn't been funny in decades, I opted to watch this painful farce out of my reverence for the great book which 'inspired' it. And it had Marty Feldman -usually a real hoot. What unforgivable tripe! Lewis and Khan play Wilbur and Eliza (giant, ugly twins who are a genius collective genius when together, but idiots when apart) and their aristocrat parents terribly. Sadly, I'll concede that it sticks to the book fairly well -THE FIRST HALF! All the best portions are ultimately lost due to a cop-out screenplay which aims to get laughs from caper-style bumbling and mess-making by over-aged comedians sadly better suited to telethons. Read the novel -it's brilliant; Wilbur becomes the last (and tallest ever) President of the United States just before a plague kills off the majority of its population (wildly suspected to be due to inhalation of microscopic Chinese). His recollections of his better years and falling-out with Eliza are signiature bitter-sweet Vonnegut. The best part of the movie was Pat Morita as a prototypical 3" Chinaman ambassador.

Aliens posess the bodies of two children in this spoof of "Close Encounters", "2001", et. al.

This is not the BEST parody film, but one of the better ones. Kurt's novel is rather poignant in places and is captured in the film rather well.

Worth renting if you are a Lewis, Vonnegut, or Kahn Fan!

Vonnegut novels have proven time and again very difficult to translate to film. For whatever reason, the subtlety and humanity of the novels get lost or scrambled in the interpretation. And this is probably the most glaring example.

Missing most of the point of the book and pulling focus from any reflection on loneliness or the absurdity of modern life and putting that energy into seeing Jerry Lewis interact with a poorly SFX overlay fortune-cookie-shaped UFOs. Which is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the high key racism in the film.

An arguably stellar cast gets mostly wasted on a joyless slog through a story that feels only tenuously adjacent to the source material.

I was too young when it came out to notice, but it's hard to imagine this seeing some release in the same year that Ghostbusters came out. It feels like it was made in a different decade, in a different dimension. I feel like this film and Heartbeeps bring similar grim energies. Both films I find interesting in their approach. Both intended to be comedies with heartfelt messages at the core, and both of them leaving you with a forlorn emptiness. If you absolutely love the book, maybe don't seek this out. If you want to see a big weird mess, then go for it.

I understand the book this is "adapted" from was not great by any means, but I don't think a book could possibly be this bad.

The description for the movie does no justice in describing this atrocity. Twins are birthed from the loins of two "beautiful" people, only they look like Sasquatch sized creatures from another world (oops, spoilers! Oh wait no one will care). They apparently seem smart together but the film gives us little insight into that. On one hand, we do get tons and tons of bad vignettes of people well past their prime trying to be funny. Jerry Lewis seemingly shaped this after Blazing Saddles, but took out any social commentary, acting prowess and humor.

The worst part is all of the actors look like they are being confronted by existential dread. They probably saw the dailies and were horrified. Apparently the weirdo that made this film also made Baby Geniuses. No wonder it was so terrible. There is a morbid curiosity of seeing a train wreck like this, but most people have better things to do with their lives.

I got this movie really cheap at blockbuster and we watched it a few years ago. REALLY BAD! When I first saw this movie I thought it was the worst movie possible. Not only was the acting and the story and the jokes HORRIBLE but it gave me a headache to watch. I have not read the book and supposedly that is good, I don't see how it could be with a story like that though. There was nothing good about this movie. I rate it a 1 out of 10. I don't see how it is possible to make a movie like this and believe that in any way it will be successful or even entertaining. I cant even imagine how people were at the premier of this movie.