The Nutty Professor (1963) on Netflix
Julius Kelp, a scruffy chemistry professor, is humiliated by a bully and seeks a fix in his laboratory. The serum turns him into Buddy Love, who pursues the student Stella Purdy.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb6.6/1019,614 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes82%
Trailer
Plot summary
Julius Kelp's classroom experiments end in wreckage, and when a football-playing bully attacks him, he decides to build up his physique at a gym. That brings no strength, so he turns to chemistry and mixes a serum. The dose knocks him unconscious and he comes to as Buddy Love, a suave, girl-chasing hipster with all of Kelp's timidity gone. As Buddy he pursues Stella Purdy, one of his students, who resents his manner but finds herself drawn to him, and he takes the stage at the Purple Pit, the nightclub the students frequent. The formula wears off at the worst moments and leaves Kelp humiliated, yet the attention his other self draws is hard to abandon.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Nutty Professor (1963)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While making the film, Jerry Lewis devised a real-time, on-camera monitor known as video assist, which later became a standard tool in the film industry.
- Buddy Love is often read as a lampoon of Jerry Lewis's show business partner Dean Martin, whose partnership with Lewis ended in an acrimonious 1956 breakup; Lewis consistently denied the rumor.
- Professor Frink of The Simpsons borrows many mannerisms and techniques from Lewis's Julius Kelp delivery, and Lewis himself voiced Frink's father in the episode "Treehouse of Horror XIV".
- The Alaskan Polar Bear Heater, the cocktail Buddy Love orders in the film, started out as a fictional drink but is now listed on some cocktail websites.
