Just four years after this, Charlie Chaplin had a great triumph when he parodied Adolph Hitler in "The Great Dictator". This World War I musical comedy shows the big mouthed Brown in top form as a war recruit entertainer booed for not joining up, so he overlooks his supposed flat feet and enlists. Overseas, one of his co-stars (Eric Blore) ends up being his sergeant, his socialite fiancee (Beverly Roberts) shows up out of the blue, spitfire French maiden Joan Blondell takes a shine to him, and a former co-star Winifred Shaw shows up to give him a real pain in the neck. Brown's incompetence as a soldier actually benefits him here as he ends up letting go a bunch of enemy carrier pigeons before he winds up in a German officer's uniform, uses a Sergeant Schultz like dialect to command the enemy troops, and then for all his efforts in aiding the allies war efforts is threatened with the firing squad!
Most films about World War I don't hold up as well, simply because they aren't as interesting as films about World War II where the enemy was ten times more menacing and world threatening. This, however, provides a ton of light entertainment, preposterous in many ways, but you can't expect Chaplin or Keaton in a Joe E. Brown film. Blondell steals every moment she is on screen in an over-the-top spitfire supposed French accent, and her song and dance number with Brown ("A Buck and a Quarter a Day") is quite good. Compared to her, Roberts and Shaw are pretty bland, although Shaw does get one good song. The Apache dance number features a soldier in drag who happens to look like Kaye Ballard and is quite funny. There are some nice little comic twists and one particular bend towards the finale that you may not see coming in the way that it does.
Most films about World War I don't hold up as well, simply because they aren't as interesting as films about World War II where the enemy was ten times more menacing and world threatening. This, however, provides a ton of light entertainment, preposterous in many ways, but you can't expect Chaplin or Keaton in a Joe E. Brown film. Blondell steals every moment she is on screen in an over-the-top spitfire supposed French accent, and her song and dance number with Brown ("A Buck and a Quarter a Day") is quite good. Compared to her, Roberts and Shaw are pretty bland, although Shaw does get one good song. The Apache dance number features a soldier in drag who happens to look like Kaye Ballard and is quite funny. There are some nice little comic twists and one particular bend towards the finale that you may not see coming in the way that it does.