The Nutty Professor

Julius Kelp is a chemistry professor: clumsy, timid, and mocked by his students. He mixes a formula and drinks it. Out comes Buddy Love: confident, sardonic, rude, and the centre of everyone's attention. As the formula wears off, the two personalities start bleeding into each other. The subject is not science but which of them is worse. Kelp is pitiful but harmless; Buddy is attractive and humiliates people. The brave thing about the film is making Buddy genuinely appealing and leaving the audience uneasy. The form is colourful and physical: laboratory accidents, gym sequences, nightclub scenes. Buddy's first entrance into the club is subjective; the camera walks in his eyes and the room distorts. Jerry Lewis wrote, directed and played both parts. It was claimed for years that Buddy Love was a jab at his former partner Dean Martin; Lewis denied it and described the character as a side of himself. The film was added to the National Film Registry and remade in 1996 with Eddie Murphy. Stella Stevens plays the student. Who it is for: viewers who like classic American comedy and films carried by one performer. Who it is not for: anyone unfamiliar with Lewis' brand of humour; the broad physical playing is not for everyone now.