AllMovie

My Friend Irma was a big enough hit in 1949 to spawn a sequel, but modern viewers may wonder what the attraction was. The answer, of course, is Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (especially Lewis), who are old hat now, but were brand spanking new to cinema audiences at the time. Martin's type had been around before, but Lewis, though he owed a lot to a whole generation of clowns who had come before him, was something fresh, especially compared to the exceedingly stale film which surrounds him. The comic is still hard to take, although he's presented in relatively small doses here. He provides the film with what little pep it has. Martin sounds good and he performs his straight man/lover-boy role well, and there are a few nice moments from old reliable Hans Conried. Other than that, there's little to keep the viewer awake -- certainly not the script, which is filled with trite "comic" situations, dialogue that pushes way too hard for laughs, and a ridiculous plot that bounces along from situation to situation with no dramatic build or impact. Marie Wilson is a mechanical dumb blonde, lacking the spark and life that someone like Judy Holliday brought to the cliché, but at least she's not as annoying and charmless as John Lund. (Diana Lynn, for her part, is bland but harmless.) Fans of Martin and Lewis may want to take a peek, but even they will probably tune out before the end.