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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Thanks for the memories!

Blistering performances.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I saw this movie 30 years or more ago and recall it being quite funny, and while it's not as funny as I remember it being, it's still an enjoyable romp with typical Bob Hope comedy. It's also a movie that portrays a pretty accommodating military. This makes sense within the context of a wartime movie - they didn't want to scare anyone away from the army - but the way Hope casually wanders off base and does various shenanigans without ever getting locked up strains credulity. As I watched this, I found myself wondering why Hope made so many movies with Dorothy Lamour. They don't have any discernible chemistry, although to be fair, Hope was such a non leading man that I'm not sure he ever had on screen chemistry with any woman. I feel like checking out some more Hope movies just to try and figure that out.

Bob Hope plays a cowardly movie star who is afraid of being drafted. So he concocts a scheme to marry pretty Dorothy Lamour, in hopes of avoiding the draft. But general's daughter Dorothy figures him out and is disgusted by his cowardice. Having actually fallen for her, he comes up with another scheme to pretend to join the army to impress her, but it backfires and he finds himself actually enlisted. You can pretty much guess what will happen next. Decent WW2 comedy with the usual likable performances of Hope and Lamour. Eddie Bracken plays Bob's sidekick. It's a pleasant time-passer but nothing exceptional. It's fun to see Hope and Lamour in a movie without Bing Crosby. I kept expecting Bing to pop up and steal Dorothy away, as Bob rarely got the girl in their movies together.

For Bob Hope, in the 1940s, this is pretty routine stuff. Hope pretends to enlist in order to impress his girl friend, Dorothy Lamour, and winds up in the army by mistake. I don't know why this isn't funnier than it is. It has a cast of seasoned comedy actors, of which Lynn Overman is the best, with his dry Edgar-Buchanan wisecracks. The problem is with the script. It has a ground-out quality. Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, Mickey Rooney -- everyone seemed to be making the same movie, and this role could have been handed over to anyone. Hope is an extremely funny guy in the right context but this isn't the context. The script is unimaginative. The direction by David Butler is leaden. There are long pauses after a gag, before the dissolve, while the audience is supposed to be laughing. It seems at times that eons come and go, dynasties rise and fall, geological epochs pass, while we wait for the dissolve to the next scene in a silent room. Hope was a lot better later on, especially in the Road movies with Bing Crosby to play off. And he would be much better by himself too, in such outings as "My Favorite Spy." This one is worth watching and at times is engaging fun, but, for Hope, strictly by the book.

Not even Bob Hope, escorted by a raft of fine character actors, can save this poorly written attempt at wartime comedy, as his patented timing has little which which to work. The plot involves a Hollywood film star named Don Bolton (Hope), and his attempt to evade military service at the beginning of World War II, followed by his enlistment by mistake in a confused attempt to court a colonel's daughter (Dorothy Lamour). Bolton's agent, played by Lynne Overman, and his assistant, portrayed by Eddie Bracken, enlist with him and the three are involved in various escapades regarding training exercises, filmed in the Malibu, California, hills. Paramount budgeted handsomely for this effort, employing some of its top specialists, but direction by the usually reliable David Butler was flaccid, and this must be attributed to a missing comedic element in the scenario. A shift toward the end of the film to create an opportunity for heroism by Bolton is still-born with poor stunt work and camera action in evidence. Oddly, Lynne Overman is given the best lines and this veteran master of the sneer does very well by them. Dorothy Lamour looks lovely and acts nicely, as well, and it is ever a delight to see and hear Clarence Kolb, as her father, whose voice is unique on screen or radio, but there is little they can do to save this film, cursed as it is with an error in script assignment.