tavm After years of just seeing parts of this Martin & Lewis movie, I finally watched the whole thing on YouTube. As you can discern from the title, Dean & Jerry are in the old west. First, as their fathers from the previous century. Then, as their sons with the mother of Lewis (Agnes Moorehead) raising him back in New York to marry some Amazon woman but that son will have none of it. I'll stop there and just say that while I enjoyed Pardners, I did feel that some of the plot points and characterizations seemed rushed in order to parody certain clichés. Still, Jerry's as funny as he can be doing what he does here and Dean seems quite comfortable in his first of many times he would wear cowboy duds. The leading ladies of Lori Nelson and Jackie Loughery sure look good and nothing more. The villains of Jeff Morrow and John Baragrey provide good enough menace. So on that note, I recommend Pardners. P.S. Despite the team mentioning at the end they plan to stay together in movies for years, by the time this was released in August of '56, they had already done their last performance in tandem the previous month. It would be 20 years before they would publicly reunite on Jerry's telethon with Frank Sinatra doing his bit...

bkoganbing It was always interesting to me how the writers at Paramount managed to rework some of the plots of their old classics to fit Martin and Lewis. In this next to last film Pardners, it's taken from the old Bing Crosby classic Rhythm On The Range. They even managed to get the old director of Bing's film Norman Taurog to direct.Dean and Jerry are the sons of a pair of ranchers who were both killed in a range war. Dean's parents stayed west, but Agnes Moorehead as Jerry's mom, went East, made a ton of money and raised Jerry as the tenderest tenderfoot ever. Dean's now gone east and entered rodeo competition to win money for a prize bull named Cuddles. He meets up with Jerry who 'helps' him out in his usual manner.Most of Rhythm on the Range involved Bing Crosby on the journey back west with Cuddles the bull and Frances Farmer where some romance develops. Since no one would confuse Frances with Jerry, the love interest has to be supplied elsewhere. Jerry's cousin Lori Nelson does this for Dean. In fact according to the Nick Tosches biography on Dean Martin, the interest was off the screen as well.Jerry doesn't do too bad in this film either. He gets saloon girl and former Miss USA Jackie Loughrey. By that time Jerry's been made the sheriff and he's gotten the ire roused of one particular bad guy Jeff Morrow who thinks of Loughrey as his own. But in the end all's well and even the intergenerational range war has finally ended. Not without the usual broad comedic gags that are a Martin and Lewis specialty.Bing made out miles better in his film than Dino did in the song department. Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn wrote the score for Pardners and it's definitely not up to their usual standards. In Rhythm on the Range Bing got to sing, Empty Saddles and introduced I'm An Old Cowhand. Since they owned the rights, why didn't Paramount just let Martin have some of these to do. In fact I'm An Old Cowhand would have been a great comic duet for both Dino and Jerry.Still the accent was on comedy rather than romance in Pardners and that is what Martin and Lewis do best.

vandino1 Like every other comedy team, even the decidedly city-fied Martin & Lewis eventually had to put on chaps and kick up the sawdust. And like most of these mergers of western and comedy teams, it doesn't generate much entertainment. Also, it was nearly their last gasp as a partnership and the rot had set in. This is a mirthless comedy clumsily written and directed. Lewis is no longer the squawky scrawny mutant comic force from earlier---here he is chubby and annoying. Of course he plays the doofus, but magically and without cause, he becomes an adept fighter in the final fight scene. That's an example of the clumsiness of this film. Martin goes through the motions looking seriously bored. Lon Chaney Jr. is wasted---in fact he's almost an extra. Lee Van Cleef is also in the cast, but he gets only a few unimportant lines. The ending tag of the film has Martin & Lewis speaking directly to the audience---pleading with their fans to keep coming to their movies (obviously the world knowing at the time that the pair were practically falling apart). No matter: They only made one more movie after this junk, the equally second-rate 'Hollywood or Bust' (in which Martin no longer looks bored but actually angry).

CharlesCrumb This is a great Martin and Lewis Comedy from 1956, which is the same year that they broke up as a Comedic Duo, and this film "Pardners," was the second to their last that was made. Jerry's father and Dean's father were the best of friends, and died together in the hopes of saving their land. And of course, the story picks up with the children fully grown and ready to go back get some justice in the western town in which they were both born. Dean has some great singing numbers in this film, and Jerry's special brand of physical comedy is very effective in a number of saloon fight scenes. A very entertaining comedy!