Cinderfella

With tomorrow being Thanksgiving and already having two posts planned for tomorrow, I thought about what to blog about as a suitable holiday movie. With that in mind, I got out my Jerry Lewis box set and put in the DVD of Cinderfella.

Jerry Lewis plays Cinderfella; at the start of the movie his father has just died and the will is being read. Dad's second wife, who is Fella's stepmother (Judith Anderson) inherits everything, including all the money and the palatial mansion, with a caveat that the money is supposed to used to help Fella. Stepmom and her two kids, Maximillion (Henry Silva) and Rupert (Robert Hutton) are at the reading; Fella is looking in through a window in the rain.

We learn further that Stepmom treats Fella terribly, forcing him to be their servant, doing all sorts of chores for them. They only tolerate his presence because they're convinced that his father buried a treasure somewhere on the estate and that Fella knows where it is; they want that money. Fella has dreams about the treasure but apparently doesn't know where it is.

One day, while Fella is cleaning the pool, suddenly showing up on a float in the pool is an odd man; how he got there is anybody's guess. That man is, of course, Fella's Fairy Godfather (Ed Wynn). In their conversation, Fella uses the word "persons", which Fella explains to his Godfather means some people are fancy and are "persons", while normal everyday folks like Fella are "people". Godfather implies that's going to change.

A news report mentions that Princess Charming (Anna Maria Alberghetti), from the Grand Duchy of Morovia, is going to be visiting the US; specifically she'll be an honored guest at a party that Stepmother is going to be putting on. Stepmother has the plan that she'll be able to marry off one of her sons to Charming, bringing them some much needed money. Fella, of course, is not to be invited to the party, although with the help of his Fairy Godfather, that's going to change.

The plot of Cinderfella is, unsurprisingly, one that's very easy to see where it's going, mostly because it was intended as a humorous take on the Cinderella story only with most of the roles switched in gender. Fella is indeed transformed and gets to go to the ball, but has to leave by midnight, leading to the climax and denouement....

But does this reimagining into Cinderfella work? Not as well as it might. The first half, setting up the who transformation and ball, it reasonably good, with a lot of opportunities for Lewis to do the sort of physical comedy for which he was known. Anderson and Wynn are also bright spots in support. However, the second half, with the ball, felt surprisingly sterile to me, and really brings the movie down a notch or two.

If I were going to recommend Jerry Lewis to people, the movie I'd start with isn't Cinderfella, but the other one it engendered: The Bellboy. The studio wanted to release Cinderfella as a feel-good summer movie, but Lewis thought it was a Christmas movie. The agreement they reached was that Lewis would make another film for summer release, and that movie was the big hit The Bellboy.