Despiértame cuando haya acabado

"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.

What do you get when you combine two of the funniest stars who ever lived (Dick Shawn and Ernie Kovaks), with one hilarious scene by Don Knotts? Well, apparently you get a wacky knock-off of the (to me, more boring) "Teahouse of the August Moon," with army people building a hot springs resort hotel with surplus army equipment. Does it work?

First of all, it needs to be a whole lot wackier, considering the cast. Dick Shawn might've made it so if they'd turned him loose, but those were the days before Monty Python changed the face of comedy. Back then, comedies were thought to work when funny men were plugged into them, regardless of the material.

Is it worth watching? Only if you accept it for what it is, made in those far-flung days of the past, when movies were slower and spent time developing characters.

It doesn't really work, though it does give insight to government snafus and the waste of taxpayer dollars.

It's too bad Don Knotts didn't have a larger role.

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.

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.

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.