Three on a Couch (1966)

(On Cable TV, September 2021) One of the lesser-known Jerry Lewis vehicles of the 1960s, Three on a Couch sees the shameless comedian play five roles — or rather an artist who starts impersonating fictional people in a convoluted attempt to get his girlfriend to come spend a year in Paris. The complications arise from the fact that the girlfriend (played by Janet Leigh) is a psychiatrist with three female clients and she can’t leave them until they’re cured of their hang-ups about men — so naturally his best course of action is to impersonate their ideal mates, get them cured and then they can go to Paris. As I said: convoluted. Inevitably, the identities converge and the whole scheme explodes, but in the meantime, we get Lewis play four other roles spanning a variety of archetypes, plus some cross-dressing thrown in for good measure. The 1960s sex comedy aspects have not aged particularly well, but it’s hard to get worked up about it when it’s such a transparent way to get Lewis up and impersonating. Lewis isn’t just an actor here — he also directs and must shoulder some of the blame for the lacklustre result. It’s not that Three on a Couch isn’t funny; it’s that it’s not funny enough: given the premise, the talent and the era of much better sex comedies, Three on a Couch feels like a limp effort, so determined to get its plot points in order to the big role-switching finale that it doesn’t seem to have thought about the moment-to-moment fun of the film. It’s watchable enough if your tolerance for Lewis’ mugging and showboating is up to it. But I can think of half a dozen comedies of the time (some of them also starring Lewis) that are significantly more entertaining.