Cracking Up is a crazy quilt of sight gags, one-liners, caricatures, slapstick and quirky vocal mannerisms. In short, it’s marvelous mayhem of the kind which has gained Jerry Lewis admirers the world over.

Lewis plays a hapless misfit who seeks psychiatric help after bumbling a suicide attempt. His shrink sessions reveal a flashback history about a klutzy childhood and a family history of (what else?) ineptitude, affording Lewis to play a smorgasbord of roles, including a 6-year-old boy, a 15th-century coachman, a good-ol’-boy sheriff and a bearded guru.

The wackiness soars to new heights when our nutcase patient takes a transcontinental flight on the cheapest airline he can find. But there’s no scrimping on the laughter. Cracking Up is zany proof that nobody does funny making filmmaking better than Lewis.

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