Mikey-136

I saw this movie at a Sunday matinee in 1963. The movie was so funny that the mere memory of that movie was enough to get me laughing. And I got sent to the principal's office as a result. So you can say that Jerry Lewis got me in trouble in school!

Jerry Lewis is an incompetant errand boy who is engaged to the store owner's daughter. But to get him out of the daughter's life, the store owner turns the screws on the engagement by assigning him the worst jobs. The store owner then moves him from one department to another, leaving massive chaos and destruction everywhere he goes.

The results are hilarious enough. But the aftermath of his time in the appliance department, alone, is worth watching the movie alone. It left me laughing so hard that I had stomach cramps!

I saw the movie again many years later and it was second childhood all over again.

This movie, like the bulk of Italian movies of the period, is full of "borderline humor" that consistently borders on what some may call "poor taste". But that is exactly what makes this movie such a laugh riot! This is the type of movie where beautiful women get their dresses torn off by passing buses, blinds fly up at the wrong time and almost nothing is sacred.

Pierino, played by comic genius, Alviro Vitalli, is a juvenile who is determined to drive everybody up the wall, from his older sister at home, to the administration of his school.

Nothing is sacred and nobody in authority is safe from Pierino's pranks. Pierino will go to any length to torment his tormenters. For example, he walked past the school director with an "invisible dog" leash. The director asked him what he was doing. "Oh, walking my dog" replied Pierino. The director thought the "invisible dog" leash was Pierino's prank, until he turned around and saw some doggie droppings that Pierino had placed in the hall.

Pierino cannot stand his teacher, so he drives her up the wall until she quits. Then a new teacher comes in, who has Pierino head over heals in love. But does that mean he becomes a model student? Well, not quite.

A knowledge of the Italian language is required to understand the humor in this movie. It is a shame that there isn't a translated version of this movie. But if your ability to understand Italian isn't quite that good, there is still enough slapstick humor to leave you screaming in wild fits of hysterics.

"The People Next Door" follows the plight of a cartoonist and his daughter as they move into an apartment. The peace and quiet of the apartment complex is shattered when the new people next door move in. Weird things happen as the cartoonist's wild imagination causes wild things to happen. The moose he has mounted to the wall, for example, would converse with him as he is looking for ideas. Sometimes the moose would argue with him. All chaos breaks loose as he tries to get his weird ideas on paper. The name of his comic strip is "The People Next Door" and the comic is inspired by Gary Larson's "The Far Side".

"The People next Door" was a really stupid program. But then again, that was why the program was so funny.

Unfortunately, the series got cancelled after only a few episodes!