We complain a lot about how movies are all remakes and stunt casting and undisguised toy commercials, but all it takes is the occasional news out of Broadway to remind us that it could be worse.  That crappy movie you wasted $12 on will probably spawn a crappy play with singing and dancing and Bob Saget playing the lead for one week only and no special effects.  On that note, 83-year-old Jerry Lewis is set to make his theater directing debut on a musical version of his 1963 film The Nutty Professor.

With music by Academy Award, Emmy Award, Grammy Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Marvin Hamlisch and a book and lyrics by multiple Tony Award winner and Grammy nominee Rupert Holmes, the musical is aiming for a bow on Broadway in the 2010-11 season.

Lewis stated, “I was born with show business in my blood and working on Broadway gets it coursing through my veins like no other place can. Marvin and Rupert have given one of my favorite and most enduring films…a hilarious and gorgeous adaptation for Broadway and I could not be happier. Does this story sing and dance? You bet it does.” [Playbill]

It sings, it dances, it falls asleep on the couch and complains about the Orientals.  I’m a-tellin ya, Bimbo, this heah hootenanny is the elephant’s eyebrows.  Hold on… Cholly, I can’t hear a word this dame’s a-singin.  Can someone replace the hydro tubes on her amplification box?