No Time for Sergeants

1958 comedy

Rating: 12/20 (Jen missed the beginning but said she's give it an 8/20.)

Plot: Country bumpkin Will Stockdale is drafted into the Air Force. He's simpleminded and naive and makes life difficult for his commanding officer Sergeant King and new pal Ben.

Andy Griffith acts like he's attempting to make his character bust through the screen and bite your face off. And I don't mean that in a good way. He's a lumbering doofus of a character, lovable enough but way too much of a character to make this realistic enough for the comedy to work. Myron McCormick as the sergeant and Nick Adams as Private Ben are guilty of the same thing, almost like the leads have realized that the script isn't very funny and feel the need to out-funny each other with outrageous caricaturization. I kept waiting for the comedy to add up to something, turning into something satirical maybe, but it remained nothing more than a very very mild goofy comedy, like slapstick where slapping and the use of a stick has been strictly forbidden. That's fine because I can appreciate a dumb comedy as much as the next dumb American, but there wasn't a single thing that tickled any of my funny bones, and other than the criminally underused Don Knotts, I doubt I'll remember a single gag from No Time for Sergeants in a few months. In a way, this feels like an American take on a Jacques Tati type movie, the simple man who is thrown into a technologically-advanced world, or a world where the rules and regulations don't seem to match up with how the main character goes about things. But, typically American, the main character talks way too much and kind of stomps all over everything. I don't know. Maybe the the whole thing's a metaphor for our military?

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken

1966 Don Knotts funk

Rating: 16/20 (Dad: 18/20; Dylan: 14/20)

Plot: Don Knotts isn't asking for a lot in life. He wants to make it as a newspaper reporter. He wants the pretty girl. He wants a little respect. He gets his chance on the twentieth anniversary of the crime that made the local "murder house" infamous when he agrees to spend the night in the supposedly haunted abode and write about his experiences. Some creepy things happen during his stay, and once his ghost-written article is published, he becomes an overnight sensation. But when the owner of the house threatens his story's authenticity and sues him for libel, he's forced to fight to protect his reputation.

Had to entertain my step-father while the women folk went to the ballet, and this was about all I had that would interest him, a fan of the oeuvre of one Jim Varney. And the inimitable Don Knotts did not disappoint. From his first moment on the screen in this, he's funny. His mannerisms and his goofy deliver in a lovable loser role are pitch perfect. Knotts was born to play these sorts of roles (and Mr. Furley, of course), and everything he does in this is hilarious. It's a simple appropriate-for-families tale, one that wouldn't have made Disney execs uncomfortable. And it's filmed pretty much exactly like one of those wacky, dated Disney comedies, too. No, this isn't the most intelligently written comedy. Any movie with a tag line that starts with stuttering ("G-G-Guaranteed") and ends with a promise that you'll "be scared until you laugh yourself silly" isn't going to be. But there's something hilarious about watching Don Knotts practice his karate moves, moves that like Indiana Jones with his whip or Luke Skywalker with his lightsaber were impossible for me not to imitate, and say more than once that his "entire body is a weapon." And a repeated gag, an offscreen "Attaboy," starts funny, gets old, makes you groan, and then becomes side-splittingly funny once again. Delightful fun!

One of my goals for 2011, by the way, is to found a religion based on the worship of Don Knotts. Who's in?