After suffering through Jerry Lewis’ Smorgasbord aka Cracking Up recently I was even less looking forward to seeing another one.

But Slapstick Of Another Kind was luckily quite different, not relying on short gags and Lewis’ silliness. But it does rely on trying to deliver Kurt Vonnegut’s original novel Slapstick from 1976, which is probably as difficult as a novel can get to adapt to the silver screen, and was also met with mixed opinions by the readers and critics alike. With this in mind it was a bold move trying to pull this one off.

Unfortunately it just does not work at all. The story including Chinese in with shrinking rays in flying saucers and deformed twins from outer space born on earth feels just plain silly, without any intelligent message or subtext behind it. Still better than Cracking Up – but that’s not saying much.

80s-o-meter: 42%

Total: 12%