Hardly Working

Auteur Jerry Lewis does it all. He plays inept Bo Hooper haplessly drifting from job to job. Lewis' sense of timing as a director is phenomenally off. The scenes of Lewis' fussing with the donuts, the wacky "my ring is caught in your mesh" gag, and the lumbering appearance of the Budweiser Clydesdales are the three longest and most drawn-out scenes in "comedy" history.

Director Lewis is trying to give us time to savor our laughter; it really isn't necessary.

I absolutely dare you to watch this movie from start to finish. So bad it changes your concept of space and time. Then again, if you like seeing Jerry with big fake teeth pretending to be a wild Japanese cook at Benihana's, then you might genuinely like this movie. If so, shame on you. Absolutely awful.

I've never been lucky enough to see Lewis' legendary "The Day The Clown Cried", so this one will have to do as the worst movie I've ever seen.

I saw this when it was first released, in a theater filled to the gills with rabid Jerry Lewis fans (of which I am one) who were all ecstatic to be seeing a new Jerry Lewis movie after all those years. The opening montage of scenes from his earlier films was greeted with cheers, and this giddy enthusiasm carried over for the rest of the film. (The donut scene was a particular favorite--everybody there totally "got" it.) Good spirits and joyous Jerry Lewis fandom abounded in that theater that night, and I had a wonderful time.

Whenever I see this movie now, I recall the feelings I had when I first saw it that night. Maybe you had to see it in that context and that frame of mind to truly enjoy it. Anyway, I'm still a huge Jerry Lewis fan as I have been all my life, and I enjoy all of his movies from the highs of THE NUTTY PROFESSOR and THE LADIES MAN to the lows of WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT? and HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER. Now if I could just see THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED, my life would be complete.

This movie sucks, period! I'm an old school Jerry fan and couldn't believe how bad this movie was. Jawdropping is an understatement. Still doing the same crap in 1980 as he was in 1960, only this time it wasn't funny at all. one bad joke after the next with no relief in sight, bad ethic stereotypes and shameless product placements. JUST PLAIN BAD.

"Hardly Working" was heralded for being Jerry Lewis's first film in a decade. After seeing the final results maybe he should have waited longer. I loved Lewis films as a kid and wondered if perhaps I had just outgrown him. Watching some of his older films up against this one convinced me that it was the movie and not my maturing. "Hardly Working" is a bad film. It's poorly written and ineptly directed.

The film's best scene is its first as we see a brief montage of clips from past Lewis movies. Trust me there is nothing close to being this amusing once the film gets going. But it does get going and we see Jerry as the lovable loser who can't hold a job. He starts as a circus clown and soon gets fired and for good reason. The one scene we see him as the clown is painfully unfunny. He then moves into a succession of jobs that he gets himself fired from. One scene in particular shows how clumsy the script is. He has been hired to work at a gas station. His new boss is setting up a pyramid of cans that Jerry (of course) keeps knocking over. The exasperated boss finally sends Jerry out to serve a customer and (of course) can't even fill the gas tank without causing havoc. What does the boss do? He knocks the same pyramid of cans over that he has struggled over and over to build. Why? You tell me.

The bulk of the film has Jerry as a mailman. Certainly there are funnier things they could have come up with then sagging pickle spears and donut jokes and multiplying rabbits within the postal service. "Hardly Working" is a lame comedy that picks up where Lewis left off with his lame comedies of the late 60's.

Hardly Working (1980)

1/2 (out of 4)

Bo Hooper (Jerry Lewis) is a life long clown who finds himself out of work after the circus goes out of business. He ends up moving in with his sister and brother-in-law until he can find a job. He's able to get one job after another but he is quickly fired because he just isn't too bright. He eventually lands a job at the post office but his boss (Roger C. Carmel) hates him and that hatred grows even stronger when the boss finds out that Bo is dating his daughter (Susan Oliver).

HARDLY WORKING turned out to be the first Jerry Lewis film in a decade because THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED ended up never getting released. This "comeback" film had all sorts of problems including the production being shut down for several months because not enough money could be raised. The result on film is pretty bad on a number of levels but one of the biggest is the fact that the comedy just doesn't have many laughs that actually work. The production issues also how because the first half dealing with the brother-in-law is completely missing in the second half.

The first portion of the movie is basically just one poor skit after another. We see Lewis attempting to do various jobs with all of them ending in disaster. This includes one sequence involving him working at a gas station where he ends up destroying a car. The second portion of the movie gets away from the skit platform and deals with the romance with the girl. The problem is that these two different types of movies don't mix well together but the bigger issue is the fact that there aren't many laughs. The comedy is very forced but the direction by Lewis is less than impressive.

Roger Ebert really trashed this movie and called it one of the worst American films he ever saw. I wouldn't go that far but there's no question that Lewis was trying to recapture a former magic and it just doesn't work. The start of HARDLY WORKING has clips from previous Lewis movies as if he was trying to show people how funny he was at one time. Sadly there are very few laughs here and in the end it's quite forgettable and rather sad.