Tempi brutti per i sergenti

Movies like this are what they're taking about when they talk of classic comedies. This was the movie version of a Broadway stage hit that ran forever, and anyone who watches this film will readily understand why. Andy Griffith is absolutely perfect as Will Stockdale and Nick Adams, Sergeant King and Don Knotts fit their parts like a glove. They simply don't make many comedies that are as flat out funny as this one. They never did and still don't.

This movie is on my list of my favorite funny movies of all time. I 've lost count of how many times I've seen it, yet each time I view it, I laugh out loud all over again. It's side-splitting humor without crudeness and vulgarity - a quality that today's movies sadly lack. One of my favorite scenes is where all the draftees are being inducted - particularly where Will comes to the aid of his buddy Private Whitledge. I don't know if this is the first film pairing of Andy Griffith and Don Knotts, but their chemistry is readily apparent, in the scene where Private Stockdale is having his manual dexterity tested. I live in the southern Appalachians and I never felt once like this movie was derogatory and condescending towards mountain people. Yes, Andy Griffith's Will Stockdale was extremely naive, but he was never portrayed as being less of a human being because he was from the southern mountains and less experienced in life. I always felt like Private Stockdale's naiveté enabled him to approach things from a different perspective (albeit unknowingly) and come up with quite unique solutions. Andy Griffith was, and is, a master at portraying this kind of character.

This is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. Andy is priceless in the lead role. Being from the south, I appreciate his authentic accent. Nick Adams was surprisingly good as Ben and Murray Hamilton was a wonderfully obnoxious Irvin.

For those of you who know Andy Griffith best as the country wise sheriff of Mayberry or as the slick country lawyer Ben Matlock it might come as a surprise that Griffith got his first big career break playing that most ingenuous of military draftees Will Stockdale in No Time For Sergeants first on Broadway and then in this film version. Griffith is such a hick he makes Gomer Pyle look as sophisticated as Noel Coward.

Stockdale is one of those people who glides through life while chaos erupts all around him. Because his father William Fawcett had kept his draft letters from him, when the Air Force finally does come to get him. The man whom the chaos effects the most is his sergeant at the classification center played by Myron McCormick in the best world weary tradition he can muster.

Stockdale's best friend is Nick Adams, a kid from a military tradition family who wants the Army Infantry and not the Air Force and bemoans his fate through most of the film. He convinces Griffith of the fact that the infantry does the real fighting and everyone else just helps out occasionally. Like many other things Griffith takes them to heart and repeats them verbatim always at the wrong time. It's the heart of the humor in No Time For Sergeants.

No Time For Sergeants ran for 796 performances on Broadway during the 1955-57 season and Griffith, McCormick, Don Knotts, and James Milhollin all repeat their roles from Broadway. This not the Andy Griffith Show is the first time Knotts and Griffith work together. Knotts plays a corporal at the classification center administering the manual dexterity test and how Griffith solves it is Gordian Knot like. But his session with psychiatrist James Millhollin is the funniest thing in the film.

No Time For Sergeants is one of the best military comedies ever done on stage and screen. Do not miss it if broadcast.

Will Stockdale (Andy Griffith) is a well-intentioned, but not too bright, young Georgia man drafted into the Air Force. Despite all his good intentions, Will is too dumb to realize that his efforts to do good and make nice result in disaster, especially for nerdish new associate Ben Whitledge (Nick Adams) and their harried sergeant Orville C. King (Myron McCormick). King does everything in his power to get this amiable nuisance out of his life.

Beginning as a novel by Mac Hyman, this was then turned into a hit Broadway play by writer Ira Levin (of later "Rosemary's Baby" fame). John Lee Mahin scripted this feature film version, which has many bright moments, and a respectable amount of laughs, but which also goes on long enough that it does lose some momentum.

Still, the cast certainly can't be faulted. Griffith and McCormick had originated their parts on stage, and are both superb. Griffith is so danged clueless but also so danged engaging that you can't hate him at all. (You'd sure hate to have to deal with him, though.) Another veteran of the stage version was Don Knotts, here making his feature debut, in the role of a frazzled "manual dexterity tester". Griffith and Knotts became lifelong friends, and when it came time to cast Barney Fyfe for Griffiths' later legendary TV series, it was his old pal Knotts he thought of first. Adams is just perfect as the neurotic, high-strung Whitledge who, more than anything, wants to serve in the infantry like other family members had before him. Other familiar faces lend their valuable assistance, too: future "Jaws" mayor Murray Hamilton as the scheming bruiser Irving, and Howard Smith, Will Hutchins, Sydney Smith, James Millhollin, Jean Willes, Dub Taylor, and Raymond Bailey. And recognize the co-pilot on the plane in the last half hour? Indeed, it's Jamie Farr from the "MASH" TV series.

Directed efficiently by Mervyn LeRoy, "No Time for Sergeants" does have some great scenes and gags, such as the bar scene, or the part where the toilet lids flip up in unison to salute the base Captain (Bartlett Robinson). Griffiths' agreeable stupidity and eager-to-please nature is the glue that holds it all together.

Seven out of 10.