Visit to a Small Planet (1960)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Excellent but underrated film

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Visit to a Small Planet (1960) ** (out of 4)Kreton (Jerry Lewis) is an alien who has always been fascinated by Earth. Whenever he gets a chance he breaks away from his people to take a closer look. Finally, he's allowed to stay on Earth and ends up inside the home of a man who doesn't believe there's anything out in space.Apparently this Gore Vidal script was originally meant for the television and it's easy to see that. VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET is a pretty forgettable film on many levels, although I'm sure die hard fans of Lewis will still want to check it out. Sadly, the interesting premise is pretty much ruined by a film without too many laughs and an overall cheap look.As I said, it's clear that this was meant to be something for television and what really hurts the picture is the fact that it just runs out of gas around the thirty-minute mark and things can never pick up. The film goes on way too long and that's a problem when it clocks in at just 85-minutes. There are a few funny moments with the alien experiences a few things for the first time but this isn't enough to carry the picture.Lewis is fairly bland and boring in the role of the alien. He really keeps it low-key and just never builds up any energy in the role. IT's pretty easy to see why VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET has been forgotten over the years.

Back in 1955 Gore Vidal wrote a television play that later went to Broadway for 388 performances and starred Cyril Ritchard and Eddie Mayehoff. It was meant to be a satire on McCarthyism with an alien miscalculating a visit to Earth's American Civil War and arriving in Virginia a century later. So what must he have thought when his Broadway play wound up a vehicle for Jerry Lewis. Not that it's a bad Jerry Lewis, not his best to be sure, but surely not what Vidal intended.Jerry plays a most innocent alien with powers akin to what Ray Walston had in my favorite Martian. His people from way the other side of the galaxy have progressed to not only having powers beyond mortal men, but have dispensed with emotions. His people like his mentor John Williams are just below the Organians from Star Trek in that they still have corporeal bodies. Jerry wants to feel some earth like experiences so Williams gives him a chance.He experiences emotions all right, but a little too much for one Visit To A Small Planet. How he copes with Earth and its Earthlings is for you watch the film for.I can see that the characters that are played by the cynical Fred Clark and the excitable and paranoid Gale Gordon might have made great counterpoints for satire. But Jerry Lewis never has done satire and I doubt at his age he'll try it. Lee Patrick plays a role modeled on what she did as Leo G. Carroll's wife in the television version of Topper.It's jealousy that does Jerry in, mainly the jealousy that Earl Holliman feels as his girl and Clark and Patrick's daughter Joan Blackman starts taking an interest in their outer space visitor. Truth be told I can't see what Blackman sees in Holliman's lunkhead character. Holliman must have felt ridiculous doing the part.Best sequence in the film is Lewis and Blackman's visit to a beatnik joint and the impression he makes on all those cool cats. You'll get a chance to see ace drummer Buddy Rich in that scene and that should never be passed up.Visit To A Small Planet is a decent enough Jerry Lewis film, but far from whatever Gore Vidal had in mind.

This has to be where Robin Williams drew his inspiration from for Mork of Ork. While this movie is by no means the funniest fish out of water film you could see, I think it still rates a look IF you could just find it somewhere...

This is a rare one to be seen around, so you may want to watch it just because you might never see it again... but don't expect the same quality as other Jerry Lewis movies. Although there are some really funny scenes, Kreton is not half as funny as that other crazy alien, Mork (played by Robin Williams), and the movie lacks action and moves on very slowly through a thin plot a a lot of standard gags.