Pardners

Pardners is the 15th of the 16 feature length pictures that Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis made together. It'a a reworking of the 1936 Bing Crosby film, Rhythm On The Range, which just like this remake was directed by Norman Taurog. Plot sees the comedy duo playing sons of one time wild west partners. Brought together by accident 25 years later, the boys head out west and get into all sorts of scrapes; with Jerry even becoming sheriff! It was inevitable that Martin & Lewis would end up out west playing cowboys since all the comedy duos do it. The timing here was perfect since the 50s was the most prolific decade for the genre. On the list of their collaborations Pardners probably sits some where in the middle, it's a safe mix of songs and buffoonery, with pretty girls represented by Jackie Loughery & Lori Nelson. It's a VistaVision/Technicolor production and songs featured are "Me 'n You 'n the Moon," "The Wind! The Wind!" "Buckskin Beauty" and "Pardners," (music by Jimmy Van Heusen, lyrics by Sammy Cahn).

Safe & colourful comedy fare for fans of the successful duo. 7/10

"Pardners" is one of a slew of comedies that Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis made together in the early 1950s. Most had two or more songs for which they get dubbed musicals as well. This one is also a Western. The two starts do quite well on horses, and obviously knew they way around Western lore. Of course, Jerry's the center of the comedy here. The two play Slim Mosely and Wade Kingsley - first as senior "pardners" in the West of 1885, and then as juniors of the former pardners.

And of course with these two there must always be one and sometimes two females in the picture. Here it's Lorri Nelson as Carol Kingsley and Jackie Loughery as Dolly Riley. Others in the supporting cast include Agnes Moorehead as Jerry's mom, Mrs. Matilda Kingsley, Lon Chaney Jr. as Whitey and Lee Van Cleef as Gus.

Watching this film these many years later, I could imagine that I might have enjoyed it more for entertainment as a young teenager when I saw it the first time in a theater. Today, it's just okay for an old-timer, but I think one that grandkids might yet enjoy for some of Jerry's slapstick.

I'd heard a lot of great things about the comedy pairing of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. I'd seen Jerry Lewis in some other films before this (such as "The Nutty Professor" and "Rock-A-Bye-Baby") where he didn't really stand out as being a comedy legend, if anything he just seemed really annoying at points.

However I wasn't going to let that get in the way of enjoying what I had heard was a great double act.

But... this movie kind of sucked.

The most important thing that a comedy needs is to be funny, and unfortunately this doesn't quite hit the right mark. Jerry Lewis screaming and whining in that voice of his gets irritating after a while, and pairing him with the rather subdued and (in my opinion anyway) boring Dean Martin doesn't help as there's no one around to rein him in.

The story of this film feels like it was thought up five minuted before shooting began. It's the standard "there's a new sheriff in town and some criminals are trying to get rid of him" state of affairs that we've all seen about one hundred times before. However I will give the writers some credit as they did try to add a little twist to it, but ultimately it doesn't work because you don't really care about what's happening.

There's also this weird thing about an inter-generational family war which means that Dean Martin's character (a cowboy) and Jerry Lewis' character (a spoiled socialite who has always dreamed of being a cowboy) have to team up to stop the bad guys who are... doing something bad.

However this just means that it takes about 40 minutes for the two main characters to team up which means the rest of the movie feels incredibly rushed, so I wish they'd structured the movie better in that regard.

Oh yeah, also it's a musical? That was something I only figured out about 30 minutes in, which is when the first musical number appears. I can't actually remember any other songs after that though, so maybe there was only one? Either way, it was unnecessary and pointless and only served to waste time.

Overall, this movie was a pretty big disappointment, but it wasn't completely awful. Hopefully my future attempts to watch some Lewis and Martin will yield greater results.

This is the second to last film starring Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis--and so the title does seem a bit ironic! The film begins with Dean and Jerry's fathers (played by them with powdered hair) dying in a shoot out with baddies. However, both men had sons. One was a capable and manly cowboy (Martin) and the other a pampered mama's boy (Lewis) and they grow up not knowing each other. However, when Martin meets with his old partner's widow (Agnes Moorehead) to try to get money for a prize bull, she refuses but her son (Lewis) decides to go west with Martin and learn to be a real he-man. Plus, his mother has plans for him that include marriage to an amazon--and he wants no part of it. The rest of the film consists of Jerry acting wimpy and very goofy (perhaps too much so at times) and Martin being exasperated but loyal to his new friend who makes everyone (including Jerry) think he's a lot more rugged and brave than he really is.

If you think about it, this plot is basically "That's My Boy" (an earlier and better Martin & Lewis film) all over again. The locale is different, but the rest is basically the same formula. It's a pleasant formula, but also shows lazy writing as well and the film could have benefited from more originality. Plus, in a few scenes Jerry really does ham it up too much (even more than normal) and there are just too many "ooooo, oooohs" and "whoo-oooaa" moments in the otherwise pleasant but unremarkable film. And, as a result of so much screen time for Jerry, Martin is mostly relegated to the background--and you can see how films like this ultimately pushed them to their dissolving their pardner-ship.

By the way, this film also bears a strong similarity to the Bob Hope films "The Paleface" and "Son of Paleface". See them all and you'll probably agree.

RIDE ALONG WITH THESE TWO COMEDIC COWBOY LEGENDS - 8 out of 10 rating

I love Jerry Lewis films so when I popped in this DVD which is classified as a Western/Comedy I was hoping to see a film that may provide a few chuckles. Much to my surprise for a picture that was released almost 60 years ago the picture quality was in pristine Technicolor, the tandem of Martin and Lewis and a strong supporting cast that included Agnes Moorehead kept me entertained throughout the film from beginning to end.

Lost in the production values of today's films is that combination of a simple but effective plot, the bantering between the two co- stars Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, the slapstick comedy of the King of Comedy of the 1950's and 1960's Jerry Lewis, and the film also threw in a few cowboy songs that were sung by swooner Dean Martin. Heck even Jerry and Dean sung a few numbers together.

I keep hearing that life was much simpler back in the 1950's than it is now 60 years later. Although in my humble opinion if there were more family oriented films such as this classic comedy "Pardners" that were more readily available for families to sit down and watch together as a family unit rather than today's generation of laptop, tabloid and android users who prefer to watch films in isolation that are saturated with Computer Generated Imagery more commonly known as CGI the family unit would be stronger today with a lot less violence in the world.

Pardners has everything this moviegoer demands. It has a simple plot with great comedy relief and a few light songs to go along with the cowboy's journey. The two old cowboys from the late 1800's played by Dean Martin and Lewis die together at the hands of an evil desperado but leave behind their sons (also played by Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis) who 25 years later in the early 1900's join forces together once again to take down the evil banker who also happens to be the son of the rustler who killed their daddies 25 years earlier.

Jerry Lewis plays the bumbling heir apparent to mom's (Agnes Moorehead) industrial revolution fortune who runs away to reunite with real life cowpoke Dean Martin to save the ranch that Jerry's and Dean's daddies died trying to save many years ago. It is a wonderful family film that has endured the test of time. I urge families to sit back and relax with a bowl of popcorn and just enjoy this comedy western classic.

I give the film a strong 8 out of 10 rating