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The opening sequence of
Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River has a bowler-hatted Jerry Lewis mischievously striding (in his oddly graceful, loose-hipped way) along the streets of London. The spontaneous business he creates is, alas, the last bit of freshness in the movie, which quickly reverts to a painfully labored plot. Jerry is in Swinging London (wrap your mind around that), an entrepreneur who spends the entire film trying to make up to his estranged British wife for turning her family estate into a Chinese restaurant-discotheque. The story also involves Arab oil barons, Portuguese automobiles, and a philandering dentist. Lewis didn't direct himself in this one, which accounts for the off pacing and total lack of good visual gags. It was 1968, and his rapid decline from creative excellence (see
The Ladies Man and
The Nutty Professor) and box-office potency was already into its skid.
--Robert Horton
Review
Don't bother with Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River, one of Jerry Lewis' lesser efforts. While it's not as totally worthless as Three on a Couch or Hook, Line and Sinker, it's amazingly unfunny. Even those partial to Lewis' over-the-top brand of humor will find little to laugh at here, partially because Lewis is indulging his unlikable opportunist persona rather than pushing his klutzy-but-hopefully-endearing persona. The bigger problem is that there's no focus to the film. It veers between being an off-the-wall comedy, a spy spoof, a romantic comedy, a fish-out-of-water film, a satire, and a semi-serious look at then-contemporary mores and relationships. It fails at all of them, and this scattershot approach gives Lewis and the rest of the cast very little to play; characterization is haphazard and changeable at whim. Jerry Paris' direction is lackluster and obvious, and he can no more help Lewis pull together the extremes of his performance into something coherent than he can help the film do the same. If Bridge is redeemed at all, it's by some isolated moments supplied by its supporting cast, most notably a genuinely funny turn by Patricia Routledge and some decent work from Terry-Thomas and Bernard Cribbens. Aside from this, there's little to recommend here, even to Lewis aficionados. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
