A fun movie with great actors and actresses, mind you - beautiful actresses. Yes, the story telling could use some improvement but the overall feel is fun. Some story lines within the plot fail to develop satisfactorily, but the overall feel of the movie is light hearted and just fun to watch. I won't go into detail of the failures but it is definitely a movie worth your time. The ending seemed rushed and could have used better closure, but I repeat it is worth our time.
10 Reviews
The farce of this film was its making, where the plot fails
SimonJack31 May 2021
"Wake Me When It's Over," as another reviewer commented, is an apt title for this film. Implying, in this case, that this film might be a challenge to stay awake while watching. Well, the idea for the plot surely is okay, but something with various complicated parts that this has needed a great script, excellent direction and a cast to deliver. The cast is so-so and mixed, but the screenplay for this film, and the writing, are poor.
So, what could have been a very good post-war comedy, turns out to be a weak attempt at a farce that just doesn't deliver. Hollywood was making some very good light comedies about military and government service during the 1950s and early 1960s, but this isn't one of them. I didn't read the novel the film is based on, but would guess it must be much better than this film. My five stars are for the efforts of some of the cast.
Not even most veterans or military service and war film buffs are likely to think much of this film.
So, what could have been a very good post-war comedy, turns out to be a weak attempt at a farce that just doesn't deliver. Hollywood was making some very good light comedies about military and government service during the 1950s and early 1960s, but this isn't one of them. I didn't read the novel the film is based on, but would guess it must be much better than this film. My five stars are for the efforts of some of the cast.
Not even most veterans or military service and war film buffs are likely to think much of this film.
Thin Comedy
dougdoepke21 April 2013
A resourceful airman (Shawn) gets assigned to a forgotten island installation in the Pacific. There he puts other apathetic airmen and locals to work building a popular hotel with abandoned government materials. However, the big brass don't take kindly to his enterprise.
It's a thin service comedy at a time when service comedies were popular, e.g. Mr. Roberts (1955), Operation Madball (1957). I can't help thinking Shawn is miscast as the principal lead. Frankly, he looks a little lost, at times. As a performer, he excels at zany parts both on stage and on screen, It's a Mad, Mad World (1963), for example. But here he's used in a fairly straight role as an occasionally amusing entrepreneur, a role any number of non-comics could have handled. Also, Kovacs looks zany in his unmilitary outfits, but has no one to play off of as he did with Jack Lemmon in Madball. So he has no real routines other than shimmying down a flagpole.
It also looks like director LeRoy, a Hollywood veteran, is somewhat indifferent to the material. There's no snap to the scenes or to the editing. And I'm not sure why, since he has a number of successful comedies in his resume. It may be he didn't care for the screenplay, which is anything but tight. Instead, it stretches out in somewhat meandering fashion. Too bad also that the stellar crew of comedic supporting players—Knotts, Strauss, Kaplan, go largely unused.
All in all, the movie's an overlong disappointment, despite the talent involved.
It's a thin service comedy at a time when service comedies were popular, e.g. Mr. Roberts (1955), Operation Madball (1957). I can't help thinking Shawn is miscast as the principal lead. Frankly, he looks a little lost, at times. As a performer, he excels at zany parts both on stage and on screen, It's a Mad, Mad World (1963), for example. But here he's used in a fairly straight role as an occasionally amusing entrepreneur, a role any number of non-comics could have handled. Also, Kovacs looks zany in his unmilitary outfits, but has no one to play off of as he did with Jack Lemmon in Madball. So he has no real routines other than shimmying down a flagpole.
It also looks like director LeRoy, a Hollywood veteran, is somewhat indifferent to the material. There's no snap to the scenes or to the editing. And I'm not sure why, since he has a number of successful comedies in his resume. It may be he didn't care for the screenplay, which is anything but tight. Instead, it stretches out in somewhat meandering fashion. Too bad also that the stellar crew of comedic supporting players—Knotts, Strauss, Kaplan, go largely unused.
All in all, the movie's an overlong disappointment, despite the talent involved.
Heavy-handed, unfunny "comedy"
frankfob8 June 2013
Director Mervyn Leroy has done much, much, much better work over his long career than this mess. Supposedly a "comedy" about airmen at a forgotten Air Force base in Japan who turn their installation into a luxury resort hotel, everything about this picture is second-rate. Ernie Kovacs is a brilliant comedian but he plays it straight here and it doesn't work. Dick Shawn isn't a brilliant comedian and he also plays it straight--for the most part--and it doesn't work, either. The script is ham-fisted, and the supporting performances by a usually reliable cast of good character actors--Jack Warden, Don Knotts, Parley Baer and others--aren't much better than those of the leads. Former model Margo Moore--whose career didn't last very long--is around as Kovacs' love interest, but unfortunately they have absolutely no chemistry together whatsoever, and the "romance" comes across as stiff and forced, which pretty much describes the entire movie.
There are service comedies that are worse than this one--Tommy Noonan and Peter Marshall's 1959 disaster "The Rookie" comes to mind--but there are also many, many better ones. Avoid this dud.
There are service comedies that are worse than this one--Tommy Noonan and Peter Marshall's 1959 disaster "The Rookie" comes to mind--but there are also many, many better ones. Avoid this dud.
Delicious writing and acting
klg1921 July 2005
I've not read the Howard Singer novel, but seeing this film is going to send me straight to the library for it. I watched this on a whim, because I wanted to see an Ernie Kovacs film performance different from his turn in "Bell, Book, and Candle." The cast in this film--from Kovacs, to newcomer Dick Shawn, to the marvelous Marvin Kaplan, to a wonderfully subdued Jack Warden--is top-notch, and the writing is just splendid. The film takes on military bureaucracy, sexual mores, international relations, postwar backlash, and mixes it all up with the sort of hijinks that Sergeant Bilko was best known for. It's sheer delight.
Shawn is the victim of a bureaucratic snafu: listed as dead after having spent 2 years in a German P.O.W. camp, the Air Force decides to issue him a new serial number instead of reinstating his old one, then discharges him the next day. As a result, with only one day's service on his record, Shawn is re-drafted 7 years after his official discharge, and stationed on the remote Japanese island of Shima, where the hostile inhabitants still have a shrine to a downed Japanese plane.
The air base C.O. is a cavalier flyboy, played by Ernie Kovacs, with the only other real authority being the doctor, played by Jack Warden. The 100 men stationed there are bored out of their skulls (Don Knotts has a nice turn as the activities counselor), and with Shawn's arrival a plot is hatched to keep the men occupied, improve local relations, and dispose of a great deal of G.I. surplus material.
The movie is a little on the long side, and the subplot with the female lieutenant seems a little forced, but the action and snappy dialogue will keep you engrossed throughout.
Sadly, this film is not available on VHS or DVD, which is a crying shame. Watch for it on television; you won't regret it.
Shawn is the victim of a bureaucratic snafu: listed as dead after having spent 2 years in a German P.O.W. camp, the Air Force decides to issue him a new serial number instead of reinstating his old one, then discharges him the next day. As a result, with only one day's service on his record, Shawn is re-drafted 7 years after his official discharge, and stationed on the remote Japanese island of Shima, where the hostile inhabitants still have a shrine to a downed Japanese plane.
The air base C.O. is a cavalier flyboy, played by Ernie Kovacs, with the only other real authority being the doctor, played by Jack Warden. The 100 men stationed there are bored out of their skulls (Don Knotts has a nice turn as the activities counselor), and with Shawn's arrival a plot is hatched to keep the men occupied, improve local relations, and dispose of a great deal of G.I. surplus material.
The movie is a little on the long side, and the subplot with the female lieutenant seems a little forced, but the action and snappy dialogue will keep you engrossed throughout.
Sadly, this film is not available on VHS or DVD, which is a crying shame. Watch for it on television; you won't regret it.
"Witless" is the word!
JohnHowardReid27 June 2017
Warning: Spoilers
Copyright 1960 by Mervyn LeRoy Productions, Inc. New York opening at the Paramount: 8 April 1960. U.S. release: June 1960. Australian release: 28 July 1960. 11,294 feet. 125 minutes.
COMMENT: A surprisingly apt title for this overlong, heavy-handed, laborious farce which only comes to life in its climactic courtroom scene where drama is suddenly substituted for foolery. A waste of time and money, here is yet another variant of "The Teahouse of the August Moon" which, like "Cry for Happy", smothers any promising ideas in the script by indifferent direction. In fact LeRoy's handling is especially tedious, with an utter disregard for pace or wit.
Don Knotts' fans are warned that their idol's role is ridiculously small, being confined to just the one paltry scene. The rest of the "comic" slack is taken up by the untalented Dick Shawn, a woebegone, humorless refugee from Las Vegas.
Deserving of better things, Ernie Kovacs struggles vainly against rock-bottom material, whilst Robert Strauss mugs away with unbridled abandon on the flimsiest excuses. Even the girl — supposedly a "tender-hearted buzz-saw" — is a bore.
For this late in the day, the CinemaScope photography is surprisingly grainy. Other credits are likewise below standard — with a special mention for the bleep title tune "sung" by Andy Williams.
OTHER VIEWS: A prolonged and massive bore. — "Monthly Film Bulletin". Witless. — "The New York Times". Too slight to keep up the momentum of a story that is dragged out too long and telegraphs most of its points. — Paul V. Beckley in "The New York Herald Tribune".
COMMENT: A surprisingly apt title for this overlong, heavy-handed, laborious farce which only comes to life in its climactic courtroom scene where drama is suddenly substituted for foolery. A waste of time and money, here is yet another variant of "The Teahouse of the August Moon" which, like "Cry for Happy", smothers any promising ideas in the script by indifferent direction. In fact LeRoy's handling is especially tedious, with an utter disregard for pace or wit.
Don Knotts' fans are warned that their idol's role is ridiculously small, being confined to just the one paltry scene. The rest of the "comic" slack is taken up by the untalented Dick Shawn, a woebegone, humorless refugee from Las Vegas.
Deserving of better things, Ernie Kovacs struggles vainly against rock-bottom material, whilst Robert Strauss mugs away with unbridled abandon on the flimsiest excuses. Even the girl — supposedly a "tender-hearted buzz-saw" — is a bore.
For this late in the day, the CinemaScope photography is surprisingly grainy. Other credits are likewise below standard — with a special mention for the bleep title tune "sung" by Andy Williams.
OTHER VIEWS: A prolonged and massive bore. — "Monthly Film Bulletin". Witless. — "The New York Times". Too slight to keep up the momentum of a story that is dragged out too long and telegraphs most of its points. — Paul V. Beckley in "The New York Herald Tribune".
This is a keeper
bernie-5023 October 2001
The film parallels the book with a few risqué exceptions. What is unique is that even though major actors were picked for the movie they could not be closer to the character description from the 1959 book of the same name by Howard Singer.
Russ is a schnook. Therefore if something can go wrong it will. His wife is into insurance of all kinds. She wants him to get his GI insurance while he can. After she forces him to apply (schnook), he must explain that he has two serial numbers (schnook). When he was shot down over Germany he was presumed dead and needed a second number to get discharged (schnook). So naturally realizing that the (schnook) being in the service only one-day on the second serial number, is called up to finish his time.
He ends up on an island in the middle of the Sea of Japan. There he has a revelation that saves his sanity and that of 400 other servicemen. A plan so brilliant that I am not about to tell you what it is or how it is executed.
In the book the plan cured his shnookyness, in the movie it takes a trial. The cast includes Dick Shawn as the schnook and Ernie Kovacs as his commander and hotshot fighter pilot.
I can relate to this as I also have two serial numbers.
Russ is a schnook. Therefore if something can go wrong it will. His wife is into insurance of all kinds. She wants him to get his GI insurance while he can. After she forces him to apply (schnook), he must explain that he has two serial numbers (schnook). When he was shot down over Germany he was presumed dead and needed a second number to get discharged (schnook). So naturally realizing that the (schnook) being in the service only one-day on the second serial number, is called up to finish his time.
He ends up on an island in the middle of the Sea of Japan. There he has a revelation that saves his sanity and that of 400 other servicemen. A plan so brilliant that I am not about to tell you what it is or how it is executed.
In the book the plan cured his shnookyness, in the movie it takes a trial. The cast includes Dick Shawn as the schnook and Ernie Kovacs as his commander and hotshot fighter pilot.
I can relate to this as I also have two serial numbers.
Arguably the worst movie ever made!
beegeebright12 March 2013
I just don't know what movie these other reviewers saw, but the movie I saw had no jokes at all. It had the set ups for jokes and people who can certainly be funny, Kovacs and Shawn for just two, but they aren't funny here. A complete waste of your time and as far as paying money for it, absolutely out of the question. It does not make fun of bureaucracy in the military. MASH makes fun of that. This just drones on and on with stupid situation after stupid situation. I wanted another "Operation Mad Ball", so believe me I get wacky military humor, that movie had it, this movie does not. Idiotic in tone, concept and delivery. I really hated this movie. No wonder it was buried on Fox Movie Channel. I will not miss Fox Movie Channel. There is a reason that you never hear of these movies.
Decent movie
mmcglass-9004527 March 2019
I never heard of the movie until I saw it on TV about a year ago. I thought it was good, funny, and pretty much fit with the military style comedy genre of the late 50s, early 60s. Dick Shawn is good, but his supporting cast really makes the movie go.
A Tsunami in Shima
EdgarST27 December 2016
Warning: Spoilers
Its graphic example of recycling warfare waste is probably the only saving grace of this bad and moronic American service comedy, which should be called instead "Testosterone Nightmare". Under the command of a beer-drinking, cigar-smoking and sexist captain (Ernie Kovacs) who throws empty cans into the air and wants a submissive and dependent woman, the plot concerns macho US Air Force men wasting the moneys of tax-payers, while they do nothing in a hard to find base in a remote Japanese little island called Shima, where local persons despise them. In comes a private (Dick Shawn) who happens to have two serial numbers (a fact that turns out to be the author's key artifice in the idiotic resolution) and who out of boredom proposes to everybody in the base to build a hotel in the island
just to do something. They use all the wood, iron, tin or plastic of weaponry that American armed forces left around Japan, incorporate the community hiring local fishermen, maids and workers, and they successfully open the place recurring to false advertising (the promise of curative water in the premises, that also increases male potency). A scientific writer (Robert Emhardt in an embarrassing role) discovers the fraud and of course there is a shallow-brained trial that ends concealing corruption in all levels, or perhaps
giving voice to a collective guilty conscience for all the cultural, physical and psychological health damage the United States brought to Japan and its people to end World War II in Asia with "nuclear wizardry", and thereafter. To top the whole mess, beautiful Nobu McCarthy is wasted, used as decor, playing the educated daughter of the mayor of Shima who is unable to explain anything to inane officials who think she is a slave of Shawn, who the maids call papa-san. One may say, "Hey, it's a comedy". Yes, but what an uninspired comedy. No wonder I had completely forgotten it, since I saw it when I was a kid.
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