Watch Private Buckaroo For Free

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

This is more of a musical revue with a slight edge of a plot, and truly enjoyable only when the Andrews Sisters are singing or some well known clowns are providing some dated but still humorous chuckles. Of course, when the Andrews Sisters get loose with "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree" (with anybody else but me....), it almost tops their performance of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" in Abbott and Costello's earlier "Buck Privates", of which this is obviously a low budget follow-up to. Ted Lewis leads the band, and performs "Me and My Shadow" (with a black dancer, of course...), while Shemp Howard and Mary Wickes provide the necessary amount of laughs simply by searching for a table in a nightclub to make this (barely) a passable time filler. Of course, Mary Wickes could flip pancakes and crack jokes in her deadpan manner and she'd steal the show.

Private Buckaroo, a high-energy, patriotic movie from 1942, has two uses now. The first is to show us the optimism of our elders as they readied themselves to support the troops fighting in WWII. Sure, the jokes are corny, but the musical numbers crank up the confidence with everything from "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree" to "Six Jerks in a Jeep." It's not a bad idea to now and then remind ourselves of what an older generation of Americans were facing. The second use of the movie is to provide fodder for all those graduate students eager for an easy doctorate in "American Popular Culture," a phenomenon that proves, if the money is right, that American universities will offer degrees in just about anything. The barest of plots has Harry James being drafted. Naturally, his whole orchestra signs up, too, including Lon Prentice (Dick Foran), his singer who has an attitude adjustment problem. We see the high-jinks of training, a romantic encounter that will serve to straighten Prentice out, and a big show just before the boys ship overseas. All this is just a clothesline to pin on at least 13 musical numbers, and The Andrews Sisters and Harry James do most of them. The comedy intermissions are several. To give you an idea of what Universal's writers were capable of, the three-way romantic laugh relief involves Bonnie-Belle Schlopkiss (a tall and emphatic Mary Wickes), Sergeant Muggsy Sharell (Shemp Howard, who was earlier and later became again one of the Three Stooges) and Lancelot Pringle McBiff (an odd incarnation of stand up comic Joe E. Lewis). Personally, I enjoyed most Huntz Hall as a corporal trying to teach James how to play reveille. Although some people today can pass by The Andrews Sisters because of their style, particularly Patty Andrews' mugging, the three were expert at close harmony. They have six numbers; all are skillfully delivered with a great deal of verve. As far as Harry James goes, I can't think of a better way to open a movie than James and Helen Forrest giving us the full treatment of "You Made Me Love You." And in one showstopper we have The Jivin' Jacks and Jills, a group of dancing teen-agers formed by Universal to showcase the studio's young talent. The ten kids tap and leap all over the stage to "Apple Tree." The fact that the story line is almost non-existent and that romantic lead Dick Foran, who sounds a bit like a cross between Nelson Eddy and Dennis Morgan, has the personality of a cardboard box really doesn't matter at all. Doctoral candidates, start writing your dissertation on "The Underlying Significance of B Movies on the Cultural Development of American Civilization During the Formative Years of World War Two, With an Emphasis on the Influence of Teen-Age Tap Dancers on the Defeat of the Axis."

At just over an hour, this film does not exceed its welcome, despite the acquired taste of the Andrews Sisters. Patti, Laverne and Maxene were perky and certainly had good voices, but their screen personalities are either OTT (Patti) or dull (the others). To carry a film, it just doesn't work.Elsewhere there's Harry James and his Music Makers; Harry gets drafted and the band go with him (even the one with a flat foot), and that's about all the plot is.There's a funny restaurant sketch, and some nice songs and music, and the film passes the time without making the viewer cringe. It is a typical flagwaver, a patriotic morale-booster.Oh, and it has a 16-year old Donald O'Connor, showing a flash of promise of what would come later, along with Peggy Ryan.

This film is loaded with stars (Harry James, the Andrews Sisters, Donald O'Connor, Peggy Ryan, even Huntz Hall!), but it is the oldest of the performing Howard brothers, Shemp, who steals the show. He ad libs little comments throughout the film and does a very funny musical number with the Andrews Sisters. One would think that seeing comedian Joe E. Lewis in a film would be a great treat, but he is completely upstaged by Shemp. He does a very funny sketch in a night club with Mary Wickes. This is Shemp at his finest. In addition, you have the Andrews Sisters singing some Vic Mizzy music with "Three Little Sisters".