Hook, Line and Sinker (1969) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by Will Sloan ★★

  Some extended thoughts on Jerry Lewis's wobbly Columbia Pictures period.

• Review by Will Sloan ★★

  In an effort to get one step closer to conquering the entire Jerry Lewis filmography, I finally watched this little-loved movie from his period of decline. The stream-of-consciousness plot begins with Jerry as an ennui-stricken suburban dad/husband who fumbles around the house and can't ever seem to have sex with his wife. Then, his doctor (Peter Lawford) informs him he has only a few months to live, and his wife tells him he should spend it fishing and living the high life around the world (?). So, after he accumulates a lot of debt that he thought was going to be covered by insurance, Lawford informs him that he was mistaken, and he actually will live, and the best option…

• Review by Nick Dets ★★

  It’s not that big of a stretch to call this latter-era entry Lewis’ Bigger Than Life; a dark, even unflinching look at middle-aged suburban malaise and mortality. That it still tries to be a madcap comedy makes it both an entertaining oddity and a frustrating clash of tones. By the midpoint, which introduces Hitchcockian thriller elements, you could be forgiven for checking out entirely. Still, I find Lewis’ work here too fascinating to dismiss. Playing a man so out of touch with himself that his life becomes an absurd farce, he remains dimensional and poignant even when the material is clearly not working. The third act’s blatantly telegraphed twist may be the script’s biggest sin, ultimately sinking this curio entirely.

• Review by PlayForForever ★★★★

  "Why didn't you let me die? I've been living like I'm dying."

  More like a W.C. Fields film than anything else Lewis has made, it even borrows Fields' classic shaving gag from It's a Gift.

  The suburban nuclear family is as unfulfilling and bureaucratic as the giant corporation. Everything is loveless and 'practical' and everyone's out to get you.

  Not an easy movie to watch but extremely personal and important one for Lewis. Also this is more willing to criticize the Confederate South and its rotten flag more than any toothless film made in the last 20 years.

• Review by NOT LEVANA ★★★★★

  "You can tell them that I died a true fisherman, with a smile on my lips, and a fish in my heart."

• Review by laird ★★★

  This is actually a really dark story with plotless Jerry Lewis gag scenes wedged in. Those are the best scenes. Odd voiceover attempts to give structure to this studio funded vacation. Scatman Crothers plays a corpse (uncredited).

• Review by reener ★★★★

  There's a lot more going on here than anyone will say, it's saturated Jerry, director George Marshall is known for the broader Bob Hope style comedy. The pocket scenes with plot pauses aren't quite done so conventionally, neither is the flashback frame story, though it's at a molecular level. The first hour or so with some occasional spots later it looks closer to a Jacques Tati film than anyone's ever gotten. It's all joy for someone like me but if you're not as staunch the "best" is the introductory scenes, a tunnel of free associative bits, but sight of the God Vestige lies nearly halfway. Jerry is hammered at a Portuguese bar, and after making a version of the Alaskan Polar Bear Heater it turns into an insane, pinpoint sharp vaudeville ballet until he passes out.

• Review by asa

  My mom called Jerry an idiot and she’s RIGHT

• Review by Sérgio Alpendre ★★★

  Dos filmes em que Lewis atua para outros diretores após o término de sua rica parceria com Frank Tashlin, que se aposentou após um último filme em 1968, este é sem dúvida o melhor. Não é grande coisa, pois os outros competidores são Boeing Boeing, Way... Way Out e Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River. A tentativa de dar um outro direcionamento à sua persona continua. É uma comédia com bem menos burlesco que O Bagunceiro Arrumadinho, por exemplo. Tanto que quando passava na TV, era um dos que eu não gostava muito de ver (mesmo a dublagem era inferior). Na revisão, dá para perceber a boa direção de Marshall e se divertir com os infortúnios do personagem de Lewis em Lisboa.

• Review by FelixDembinski

  Cool first 30 mins which feels like Jerry's Seventh Continent with weirdly coloured Sirkian production design, then an incredibly tedious final hour. First 30 mins also manages to successfully balance goofy Jerry with serious Jerry where as the rest doesn't even seem to try. Interesting sequence where Jerry is excitedly rushing through his bedtime routine in anticipation to having sex with his wife while the William Tell Overture plays, two years before Clockwork Orange! Anticipates the darkness, despair and emptiness of the later Jerry films.

• Review by Jeremy Herbert ★★

  You know, I'd say this movie about an elaborate excuse for Jerry Lewis to go fishing around the world was an elaborate excuse for Jerry Lewis to go fishing around the world, but considering how much of it is is shot on joyless soundstages, it doesn't even have the excuse of hedonist decline. All the best bits are in the first half hour, when Jerry credibly wants to kill his children. We also get a rare glimpse of his pre-sex routine, which is not nearly as silly as you'd want it to be. The remaining five hours are stuck in neutral and shoved off a very gentle hill. Marvel as Jerry sees the world('s nigh-identical tiki bars), binge-drinks in sweaty close-up, and gets cucked! To quote a disgusted Johnny Knoxville on the DVD commentary for the first Jackass movie, upon seeing the sketch where the boys attempt to roller skate around a moving semi trailer: "It's so...conceptual."

• Review by NOT LEVANA ★★★★½

  Fire Walk With The Big Mouth