आलोचक समीक्षाएं

The makers of Police Academy and Major League team up to take on the submarine corps in Down Periscope, and the result is a testosterone comedy that's crude fun, with a pinch of corn-pone morality. It's good-natured, innocuous frivolity that should raise a few smiles and generate good but not great spring box office.

Grammer's first major feature after his TV success with Frasier finds him embracing a new persona. Out goes the intellectual cold fish, in comes the intuitive, warm, fun-loving leader of men. The role looks good on him, but it's a shame that he's also jettisoned the sophisticated dry wit which has been his hallmark in favour of a much broader, wetter humour. But what would you expect of a movie directed by Ward and co-written by Hugh (Police Academy) Wilson?

Down Periscope makes a surprisingly successful launch, with plenty of brisk one-liners and a promising set-up. But after that auspicious opening, it sinks.

This is amiable enough and perhaps one shouldn’t expect anything more from the team that brought you Police Academy (writer Hugh Wilson) and Major League (director Ward). What really lets this down, though, is the uninspired plot and one-dimensional characters. While it’s true that this was never going to be a high-brow evening at the pictures, the air of familiarity it leaves behind proves to be a major disappointment.

Though Down Periscope is set in the age of the nuclear submarine, the jokes seem to date back to the time of the original battle of the ironclads.

Exactly what you'd expect. This moderately amusing formula comedy is the screen debut of sitcom star Kelsey Grammer (Frasier), who plays a naval commander charged with piloting a WWII-era submarine in war games against the high-tech nuclear fleet.

We're reminded of Police Academy because this is another story about outcasts and rejects banding together to beat the odds in a macho profession. And we're reminded of The Sting because that's how we feel after the movie is over. Stung.

If Down Periscope, directed by David S. Ward, has the ingredients for a lively spoof of everything from Mutiny on the Bounty to Crimson Tide, they are slapped together so crudely that nothing gels, including any sense of a coherent ensemble. The tone of the acting, which is set by Mr. Grammer's blandly laid-back performance, is all wrong for a genre that demands over-the-top hamming.

There's barely a belly laugh here, and judging from the deafening silence in the theatre where I saw the film, it's not just me.

The closest this movie comes to delivering any titillation are a few open-shirted shots of Grammer that display major chest fur. You know you're bored when you have to devise a comparative body hair study to amuse yourself.