review for Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River on AllMovie

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.