Who's Minding the Store? (1963)

Instant Favorite.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

I'm not the biggest Jerry Lewis fan out there, but on the other hand I don't immediately dismiss him as an annoying goofball as some people do. In the right vehicles he does show comic talent. "Who's Minding The Store?" isn't one of his classics like "The Ladies' Man" or "The Nutty Professor", but it is fairly likable. True, the movie suffers from the fact that there is almost no plot or character development, but if you are in the mood to not think very much, the episodic narrative does suffice. None of the gags are classics (though the typewriter scene does get close to that status), but they are lightly amusing. Former animation director Frank Tashlin stages many scenes like a live action cartoon, and these scenes are visually impressive as well as provoking a decent amount of giggles. It helps that Lewis here isn't strident, coming across as a klutz, but one that is determined and a good fellow. Actually, there is one laugh out loud bit, albeit unintentional: Lewis' character at one point is mentioned to be twenty-six years old - when Lewis was actually thirty-seven years old when he made this movie, and sure looked it!

Post-Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis films were a mixed bag. You must totally suspend reality to enjoy the somewhat bizarre visual humor Lewis encompasses in his films. This movie is no exception for some of its gags, but for the most part, many of these bits offer genuine laughs.That future witchy mother-in-law Agnes Moorehead is at her domineering best as department store owner Phoebe Tuttle (even the name is domineering!) as she schemes to keep her beautiful daughter Jill St. John from marrying Lewis, whom Moorehead considers a useless idiot. She has her department store personnel manager Ray Walston hire Lewis and give him the worst jobs possible in hopes of discrediting him with St. John. She doesn't count on Lewis befriending her milquetoast husband (John McGiver), the in-name only president of the firm, as well as succeeding in many of the tasks and somehow escape the others without quitting and proving her right.Lewis is an acquired taste, but how can you not laugh at Lewis pretending to type to the popular instrumental ditty "The Typewriter"? He's also very funny as he finds a way to paint the tip of a 9th story flagpole. Dealing with a lady wrestler (Peggy Mondo) trying to fit into shoes way too small is painfully unfunny as is (sadly) the sequence with the usually delightful Nancy Kulp as a butch big game hunter. Usual Lewis nemesis Kathleen Freeman is wasted as another one of Lewis's customers in basically a walk-in. (Pardon the pun; Her appearance is in the shoe department.) The three most hysterical sequences involve store products-a golf ball, a small boat and a vacuum cleaner. These are all farcial in presentation and lack the violence of the other sequences mentioned above. Dick Wessel is funny in a recurring gag as a traffic cop who is the unfortunate victim of some of Lewis's work assignments gone wrong. Walston is appropriately "effette" as Moorehead's co-conspirator, but it seems odd to giver his character sort of a lothario trait.St. John has nothing to do but be lovely and noble, so she is upstaged by her on-screen parents McGiver and Moorehead. Each of them offers a lot of laughs, especially Moorehead, who is basically indistinguishable from her portrayal of "Bewitched"'s Endora. At least viewers in 1964 could see her ravishing red hair several years before "Bewitched" went to color, not to mention the blue eye shadow. Such familiar classic character comics as Fritz Feld, Mary Treen, Isobel Elsom and Milton Frome also appear in nice bits, although Feld's sequence (as manager of an exotic food shop) is literally, in bad taste.

I have this movie "Who's Minding the Store 1963" on VHS tape, but it's wore out now and is not available on VHS tape to buy anymore. So why is it taking this long to release "Who's Minding the Store" for the first time on DVD? when most of the other Jerry Lewis movies are already out on DVD. this movie would be great to have on DVD.I have this movie "Who's Minding the Store 1963" on VHS tape, but it's wore out now and is not available on VHS tape to buy anymore. So why is it taking this long to release "Who's Minding the Store" for the first time on DVD? when most of the other Jerry Lewis movies are already out on DVD. this movie would be great to have on DVD.

After THE DISORDERLY ORDERLY, this is Jerry Lewis's best film. Like DD, WMTS is directed by the great Frank Tashlin. The sight gags are hysterical, highlighted by a very funny fight between Lewis and a very aggressive vacuum cleaner. Nancy Kulp, herself a sight gag, is pretty amusing as a great white hunter. Lewis gets a terrific foil in shrewish department store owner Agnes Moorehead. Although Jill St. John is a bit harder to take as her daughter. She's insistent on being with Jerry and that's tough to digest. Lewis usually kept his leading ladies to the Ina Balin type...semi-ingenues who would believably be smitten with him. Nevertheless, the movie is terrific with the now famous typewriter gag.