The Big Mouth (1967)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Admirable film.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

***Spoiler Alert*** People hating on this movie are not true JL fans. This film may not be on par with his magnum opus, 1963's "The Nutty Professor" and everything he did afterwards should be viewed in that light. However, "The Big Mouth" is comedy gold; especially the scenes involving fellow comedy-legend, the rubber-faced, double-talking, cross-eyed manic magic of Charlie Callas. Heck, the 3 parts where Lewis hides out from the Mob inside a kabuki theater, onstage joining the cast in full kabuki-makeup, ad-libbing gibberish Japanese lines is absolutely side-splitting entertainment and still makes me convulse in laughter 50 years later.Jerry died yesterday at age 91, God rest his soul. Do yourself a favor and go rent the underrated 1967's "Big Mouth", and watch a comic legend at his finest.

If you are a Jerry Lewis fan, you have probably heard that this film – made in the Golden Year of 1967 – is the biggest pile of poop he ever made (although we have yet to see his "The Day The Clown Cried" and it is unlikely we will – at least, while Jerry lives). And that would be a fair description of this turkey.However, it is still worth a look – for three reasons.First and most important, he re-creates his Nerd character (Professor Julius Kelp) from "The Nutty Professor" – imagine a DVD of deleted scenes from THAT – you would pay money to see those, would you not? This is the next best thing.Second comes an extended shot of the late Charlie Callas (no relation to Maria) doing his "manic twitch" routine – it is almost worth watching this abomination for that alone. This was Charlie's ONLY film appearance and came about after they met on the Merv Griffin Show and he impressed Jerry so much, the latter promised to use him in his next project. Sadly, it turned out to be THIS.Last is a bizarre, two-minute cameo from Harland Sanders – yes, the old cross-eyed "colonel" himself. Many people today are unaware that the character on the KFC logo was once actually a REAL PERSON and he makes a fleeting appearance in this dross.Why? Well, perhaps HE was a fan of Jerry Lewis' movies – although it is unfortunate that he chose THIS one to make his film debut in

The Big Mouth has always been one of my favorite Jerry Lewis movies. Jerry surrounds himself with the cream of the crop of character actors in this one. The manner in which each actor goes crazy after seeing Jerry, (thinking he's dead), makes this movie, truly, one of Jerry's most bizarre and funny! The Kabuki scene, with Jerry in white make-up and "frightwig" is priceless! The original score by Harry Betts is first class. This film is classic "1967", (referring to films released that year like "Casino Royale", "Danger:Diabolik",etc.). I would love to see a special edition DVD release of this, with commentary from Jerry & Charlie Callas. In my dreams!

A tepid, extremely mild, fairly tedious, slightly overlong comedy. The first half has some reasonably funny bits (like the one that takes place in a phone-booth), but in the second half things get pretty desperate. Jerry Lewis himself is appealing when he is playing the "straight man", but irritating when he appears disguised. And the direction has no comic timing whatsoever.