Wake Me When the War Is Over

I received this movie in a pack called "50 all-star Movies" for $18 (45 cents each). This classic farce was a vehicle for a stable of TV sitcom stars to score some summer work. What a DELIGHT! Ken Berry (F-Troop / Mayberry RFD) as the Hapless American. Eva Gabor (Green Acres) as the scheming baroness. Werner Klemperer (Hogan's Heroes) as the jealous mayor. And a fine supporting TV cast including Hans Conried (Snidley Whiplash) and Jim Backus (Gilligans Island / Mr Magoo). OK, so the screwball twists don't reach the comic mastery of BLAZING SADDLES or BRINGING UP BABY, and the sets are definitely TV budget, but I said its a CUTE little movie, not Oscar material. If you find it in a dollar bin or a friend's DVD pile, by all means enjoy yourself some evening.

A few years before this made for TV movie was made, Alec Guinness, Robert Redford and Mike Connors made "Situation Hopeless...But Not Serious". It was a remake of a 1960 episode of the TV show "Playhouse 90". In this story, two American fliers who are shot down over Germany during WWII are taken prisoner by a very strange German civilian. Instead of turning them in to the authorities, he imprisons them in his house and keeps them there because he likes the company...even though, after a while, the war has ended! He doesn't tell the men this and only after they escape do they suspect something is amiss!

"Wake Me Up When the War Is Over" is pretty much a ripoff of this earlier film as the plots are just too similar to be coincidental...though the cast and style is much more like a 1960s sit-com than the earlier film.

When the film begins, a bumbling idiot, Lt. Carrington (Ken Barry) falls out of his transport plane and he is hidden in the mansion belonging to the Baroness (Eva Gabor). While she obviously is trying to help hide the guy, she also takes full advantage of his now knowing any German and keeps him there even though the war soon ends. She loves him and wants to keep him for herself. She even pays German war vets to dress up and occasionally ransack the place to make him think the war is still going strong. What will happen when the idiot eventually realizes that the war has been over for a long, long time.

While the previous movie had been clever and actually made sense...in an odd way, this film simply makes little sense. Instead of being a normal flier like Connors and Redford, Barry's character is just too dumb to be real. How can he not understand even one word of German or the way the various Germans try to tell him that the war is over?! Requiring such a dim-witted character basically takes a decent idea and spoils it. The presence of other 60s sit- com actors, Gabor ("Green Acres"), Werner Klemperer ("Hogan's Heroes"), Jim Backus ("Gilligan's Island") and Parley Baer ("The Andy Griffith Show") further heightens the slight and rather kookiness of the film---all it's missing is a bad laugh track. Additionally, seeing the character steal a Nazi uniform and running about Germany circa 1950 is a bit grotesque! As a result of these things and its complete lack of originality, I suggest you skip this one unless you are so totally bored you don't have energy to pick up the remote to change the channel!!

With World War 2 in its final stages an American C-47 transport plane is flying over Germany releasing propaganda leaflets encouraging the Germans to surrender. However, when enemy flak rocks the airplane one of the Americans named "Lieutenant Roger Carrington" (Ken Berry) is accidentally thrown out and is forced to parachute behind enemy lines. Although his parachute is spotted by German troops he manages to evade them long enough to take shelter in a house owned by a wealth baroness named "Marlene" (Eva Gabor) who not only hates the war but has recently been widowed and is quite lonely. So to remedy the situation she hides him in a secret basement until the German troops begin to search elsewhere. Not long afterward, the war ends but rather than telling Roger this news Marlene convinces him that it is raging even more violently in order to keep him there with her. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a rather typical light-hearted comedy for the period in which it was made and was helped somewhat by the appearances of several grade-B actors including Werner Klemperer (as the German officer "Major Erich Mueller"), Jim Backus (as the American "Colonel") along with the aforementioned Ken Barry and Eva Gabor. To be clear, while this isn't a great comedy by any means, it managed to pass the time well enough and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

As an early TV-movie, this rounded up a welter of stars from popular 1960s sitcoms that had just been cancelled. It's too bad the writers didn't give them anything new to do.

Leading the charge is Ken Berry as a good-hearted, dutiful but otherwise oblivious and bumbling American officer. A World War II clone of his Captain Parmenter from F-Troop. Eva Gabor is an aristocratic socialite again, so if you've seen Green Acres, you know what to expect. Werner Klemperer brings back Colonel Klink under a different name. And Jim Backus is the same blustery blowhard he was as Thurston Howell. This must have been very easy to write since all the writers had to do was imagine what the previous characters would have done. But that's to be expected since the two writers of this never had sitcom experience. They were gag writers for variety shows.

It has its charms as a piece of very lightweight fluff. Just don't go in expecting too much or you'll be disappointed.

It has an amazing cast, it's incredible that it's so obscure. It's basically a one joke movie but it is a funny one joke, for the most part. It does start wearing thin near the end. But a great cast, a unique liar revealed rom-com. At the time of this review it's hard to find but look for it on free streaming channels, it's worth searching for.