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After two box office disappointments in a row ("Little Giant" and "The Time of Their Lives"), Universal put Abbott and Costello back into familiar territory with a sequel to "Buck Privates." Here, the boys return from France to find familiarity in civilian life by selling ties on a street corner again. Costello has stowed away Evie, the French girl who was the camp mascot, aboard ship, and now must find a way for her to stay in the US.

Through a series of situations and some funny material, A&C make the best of a sometimes weak script. The film has little continuity from the original "Buck Privates", which explains the excerpt from the original film during the first ten minutes. For continuity's sake, the movie does get a big boost by the return of Nat Pendleton as the sergeant. It also helps matters much when we get to see Costello get a couple of shots into Pendleton -- especially after the abuse he receives from him in the two films! Passable entertainment, and A&C fit back into their old characters well. 6 out of 10.

When Bud Abbott & Lou Costello made this sequel to their first starring film and first real hit, Buck Privates, their last couple of movies suffered, box-office-wise, because they were playing characters that were only acquainted with each other as opposed to being good friends which was once again the case here. Also, by this period in time, their studio Universal Pictures had merged with International Pictures to become Universal-International. International's founders, William Goetz and Leo Spitz, wanted to fire the team as they were more interested in more prestige pictures but someone must have reminded them that despite their not being as popular as during the war years, A & C still was the most popular stars of the studio. So they made this follow-up to one of their most popular pictures with Nat Pendleton also returning as their often-nemesis Sgt. Collins who goes back to being a cop just as Bud & Lou again become con men selling ties. Mixed in this time is a young pre-teen French girl orphan named Evey (Beverly Simmons) who Lou wants to adopt but can't because he doesn't have a legitimate job and isn't married. There's more but I'll just now mention that the team are once again funny in their own unique way especially with Costello's reactions and physical pratfalls. Pendleton, himself, is also funny in what turned out to be his last film role. Bud & Lou were back in the groove after temporarily changing direction with Little Giant and The Time of Their Lives. If there's some disappointment concerning this movie, it's what I know about a couple of deleted scenes like that of Abbott, Costello, and Evey encountering a shoeshine boy who reveals being an immigrant who got adopted and recites the "Give me your poor, tired..." speech that inspires Lou to find a way to adopt Evey. In that scene, Lou's father Sebastian Cristillo is sitting next to Bud. The other deleted scene concerns Lou in the climatic race car chase smashing through a movie theatre that is showing him in a scene from Romeo & Juliet as Lou-on-film is talking to Lou-in-car before bopping him on the nose! Those two cut sequences might have added to my enjoyment of the film. ( I should note here that I've yet to watch the excised scenes as I only know of them from stills and descriptions in the book "Abbott & Costello in Hollywood" by Bob Furmanek and Ron Palumbo.) Still, there's enough in Buck Privates Come Home for me to recommend it. Oh, and the real estate salesman who sells Bud & Lou a broken-down bus is Lou's brother-in-law Joe Kirk. So as we leave this comedy team from the sequel to their Army comedy, we next go on to Laurel & Hardy in their Army comedy, Great Guns.

This happens extremely rarely but yes, this sequel to the original "Buck Privates" is better. Why? There's more of A&C in this one actually as opposed to the original which has more musical numbers in it and more of a romance subplot. In "Buck Privates Come Home" there's more typical A&C burlesque routines that made them famous in the first place. I'm speaking primarily of the 'ol "Floogle Street Sketch" and the story about Floogle Street and the Susquehannah Hat Company. Either the street name or the name of the hat company sets everyone off whenever Lou mentions them to passing pedestrians. It is pure classic comedy, of which apparently writers forgot how to do nowadays. I highly recommend this flick!

Not sure why others who have commented on this film seem so lukewarm about it. I think this is a really underrated Abbott and Costello comedy and the script (contrary to what others have said) is actually quite good. It is more subtle than some of their earlier films and actually has a lot of pathos in addition to the comedy. It also has an amazing chase sequence for a finale.

Also-- this film does not contain the Susquehanna Hat sequence or the chase footage from "Never Give A Sucker An Even Break" (as is stated in two previous comments). The film they are confusing this with is another Abbott and Costello movie, "In Society."

With the war effort in Europe over and done with, the many men enlisted into the military return home as heroes. As most of them return to their previous stations in life, Herbie and Slicker are not overjoyed with this as it involves them becoming hustlers again. This time though they have a reason to better their position as Herbie has smuggled French orphan Evie into the US and is going to struggle to adopt her legally. The pair do come up with some sort of plan but they can only succeed if they manage to evade the clutches of the police (in the form of one Sgt Collins) for long enough.

It has been many decades since I saw Buck Privates and I did want to see it again as I remembered enjoying it. Unfortunately I could not find it so I went with what I could get, which was this sequel, which sees the boys return to their private lives but with as many troubles and challenges as ever. In terms of plotting we are on pretty thin ground here because the only tangible narrative device is a sickly sweet kid (never an easy proposition) and even that is quite uninteresting. The film just about manages to get by because the various comic situations are mostly pretty funny. There aren't really any classic exchanges or situations but it is consistently amusing for those that like this sort of thing.

Abbott and Costello are doing their usual thing but they are far from going through the motions in the way that they would occasionally do in some other films they made. There are some nice in-jokes and Costello is pretty funny with some of his pratfalls and reactions. The overblown car chase at the end isn't them at their best though mainly because it feels like the writers are just looking for something "big" to end on with the hope that the noise will make viewers overlook the fact that it is neither all that clever or funny. Pendleton is pretty good as a fall guy although I did feel for his character a little bit. Brown is so-so, Shawlee is sidelined to the point of being forgettable and Simmons is so sickly that I suspect extras in her scenes developed diabetes.

All told though I quite enjoyed the film. It doesn't have the classic material or the big laughs that their better films produced but it is still an amusing affair that doesn't have too many problems to it and can be easily enjoyed by fans as well as doing an OK job for the casual viewer.