The TV movie about Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis struck me as well-made but somewhat disconnected from the real Dean and Jerry. Jeremy Northam and Sean Hayes probably played the duo as well as anyone could…but the "twinkle" of the real stars was absent for me. The two actors didn't seem especially funny doing old Martin-Lewis material and the extras who were laughing at it didn't seem genuinely amused, either. (That was actually one of the things that harmed the whole picture for me. The audience laughter really seemed phony and just served to remind us that these guys didn't have the real stars' comedic skills.)
It's interesting that Jerry Lewis has reportedly praised the script. It was a good script but its chronology of their careers was based largely on Arthur Marx's 1974 biography, Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime — a book Lewis loudly condemned back then as hateful and inaccurate. Perhaps because the filmmakers were worried about the surviving team member interfering, the movie made Jerry a bit less monomaniacal than the book, but played up the notion that Dean was an emotional shell, incapable of truly loving the women in his life. Or maybe those adjustments were done because they seemed to complement the conceit that the story of Martin and Lewis was, at heart, the tale of two men who really loved each other. I'm not sure that notion wasn't a fiction whipped up by their fans and perhaps Jerry. On the other hand, even if it was, it's a nice, tidy TV-movie way to summarize a relationship.
One of the interesting aspects of their break-up that was omitted was the amazing gamble Dean Martin was taking. At the time, Martin was in deep trouble with the Internal Revenue owing to bad business management. The sane thing for him to have done was to stick with the act for another year or two, get flush with the government and get some bucks in the bank and then strike out on his own. Leaving Jerry was a move that darn near everyone in show business thought was career suicide and to do it when he was in financial jeopardy was really a risk. But Dino had had enough of doing what had become supporting roles in Jerry Lewis movies, and feared that if he didn't soon prove he could do more than that, he would turn irrevocably into Bud Abbott. And of course, he surprised everyone, becoming — in some ways — a bigger star than Jerry.
Frankly, I find the story of Martin and Lewis most interesting just where the TV-movie ended: With the split-up. If the film last night gets good-enough ratings, it wouldn't surprise me if it spawns a sequel. There's certainly another movie there.