The Nutty Professor

Should anybody still think that Lewis doesn’t deserve to be ranked as a top-notch filmmaker, we suggest they see this classic Jekyll-and-Hyde comedy, about a science teacher (Lewis) who develops a lounge-lizard alter ego. It will change their opinion immediately: It’s not only his best movie, period, but a pitch-perfect example of what J. Hoberman calls the “vulgar modernism” of Lewis’s work. That Buddy Love is a doozy.