Absolutely brilliant

A Major Disappointment

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Nothing special about this production line comedy beyond the presence of Jackie Gleason at a point where his comic personality hadn't yet been formed. They have him doing an obvious imitation of Bud and Lou with Durant and a bit of Bob Hope even down to the catch phrases. It's not very funny.The film has a simple minded propaganda element with the duo as barbers wiped out by the services absorbing their small town's men and, when enlisting fails, hitting on the idea of setting up the Home Defense Force - jokes about ill fitting uniforms and marching into ditches. Naturally some crooks decide to shelter there, bringing on the misfit force to sort them out.Florence Rice and Bruce Bennett have nothing to do but look good as the obligatory young lovers and it's all pushed along briskly by Charles Barton who was one of the best people in his field, doing the most accomplished Abbot and Costellos.