AllMovie

Though he arrived at the tail end of their collaboration, with the two films he directed, Frank Tashlin helped end Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis' string of film vehicles on a pair of high notes. He did so while finding his own directorial voice -- one, as it turns out, not terribly far removed from the one found in his work as an animator. In addition to its wildly imaginative sight gags, Artists and Models sports a freewheeling, take-all-comers approach to comedy that allowed Tashlin to jump from one then-hot topic to another, from the Cold War to the controversy over comic books. It's this unpredictability that proves both Artists and Models' greatest strength and its greatest weakness, devolving by its end into unfocused chaos, albeit pretty funny chaos nonetheless. Lewis and Martin make for ideal living-cartoon protagonists, finding the perfect foils in Dorothy Malone and especially Shirley Maclaine, who matches Lewis in outrageous gesture for outrageous gesture. If the satirical targets have aged a bit, Tashlin's approach prevents that from hurting the film too much. He's as interested in the broad themes behind the targets -- barely sublimated sexuality, the hypocrisy of authority -- as the targets themselves. Even if the ready availability of too many ideas ultimately gets the better of the director, the film remains a delight from start to quite near the finish.