Which Way to the Front?

So, maybe it's because of my age (28), but I can't laugh at this type of humor. For my it's old fashioned, with lame jokes and an excessive physical humor. I respect Jerry Lewis and his contribution to cinema, he was in many ways a visionary. I also don't like modern days comedies, so, maybe I'm the problem.

Written by brilliant Monkees' TV writers Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso,WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT was the last of the "Jerry Lewis" movies until "Hardly Working" almost a decade later. Jerry's comedy is evidently an acquired taste, and admittedly he can occasionally be his own worst enemy when he helms as producer/director--but even in the dreariest of his films, there are always moments of brilliance.

WHICH WAY manages to be amusing,entertaining and yes,quite funny. It is somewhat unlike any of the typical Lewis films.The pace is very upbeat and ther are lots of excellent supporting players--a kind of JERRY DOES HOGANS HEROES.The whole thing looks kind of like an unsold TV pilot and you will either love it or hate it---but hopefully YOU VILL LAUGH

The idea of a rich man, rejected by the army as 4F, then creating his own military experience, has possibilities. It could be a funny movie.

This wasn't. Lewis' vision of the comic bits has no sense of timing. It moves along at a snail's pace, and includes myriad supporting scenes that just aren't funny. Each scene has a punch line, but most of them were a waste of film. Evidently, firing a mortar and then blandly declaring "We just blew up a Texaco station" just doesn't pack the comedic punch it used to.

Jerry stammering gibberish was barely tolerable in his early days. In this film, it just looks tired.

While the film is set in 1943, hair styles, colloquial expressions, mores, costuming, and just about everything else are firmly rooted in the late 60s.

To get picky, the freeze frame method of ending scenes, as used in this film, is just odd.

I actually got pained looks from my wife when I held on past the first twenty minutes hoping that it would eventually get to the "good part". Twenty-two minutes after that I finally gave in and stopped watching this mess.

Leonard Maltin is a Hall of Fame film critic but he's way off when it comes to Jerry Lewis' "Which Way to the Front?". Maltin gave it a BOMB. That's his worst rating. Lighten up Leonard. It's not that bad. It's not that good but it's not a bomb. It does have quite a few laughs. Jerry seems to be enjoying himself. He seems to be having fun with his supporting. The problem with "Which Way to the Front?" has to do with the script (which Jerry didn't write). So what happens is that the movie ends up having Jerry stretch things out. A lot of the stuff is funny but it ends up being too much of a good thing. The last twenty minutes or so has a few laughs but it's mostly Jerry screaming. I'm a fan of Jerry Lewis but I won't be watching this one anytime soon. Honorable mention: Jan Murray.

I clearly remember being bereft at the age of about 10 when I read that Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were splitting up. I think it was my first lesson in the world being cruel, I was truly shocked at that age as these were my comedy heroes. They'd had a string of hits finishing with Pardners and Hollywood or Bust and I just couldn't conceive of a world without Martin & Lewis. Jerry went on to make many comedies which got great acceptance as I remember in Europe, but not so much in the USA. He was regarded as a kind of modern day Chaplin and an acquired taste, mainly due to his obstinance in doing his own thing. This fortunately came to a head with the original Nutty Professor, a truly great comedy. I wish he'd left it there as Which Way To The Front, which I've just viewed is dreadful. An awful script, let down by amateur acting from the so called comedic actors supporting him, a ghastly performance by Jerry himself, screaming for most of it, and in this day and age, politically incorrect to the extreme. I smiled in two or three places and that was it. Best to avoid unless like me, you're a Jerry Lewis completist and just had to watch to the end. It seemed about as long as the second world war in which it was set.