Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

From my favorite movies..

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

"Archie" stars all the really great character players from the time period. People whose names you might not know, but who's faces and the voices were quite familiar, make up the Army Air Force unit. Don Knotts had been working on the Andy Griffith show for under two years when this was released so he wasn't as well known as he would later become, Joe Flynn had been in sitcoms since they began later to appear in many Disney movies for kids, while Robert Mitchum was an A List star and Jack Webb had been on radio for 25+ years along with TV's Dragnet before producing and directing series. Webb was the director and producer of "Archie". Of the military comedies, (Francis the Talking Mule, Your in the Army/Navy Now, "Archie" would be one of the best with a decent enough story, fun actors and humorous situations, mostly based on the chiseler (Mitchum's character) and the fall guy (Webb) interacting with each other and a bunch of extremely beautiful girls. Martha Hyer plays Webb's love interest while a gorgeous Vietnamese actress plays Mitchum's steady. Neither of the two girls would appear dated by today's standards, the beauty holds out. And that is the movie, high jinks by Mitchum, as he pulls the wool over the other members in the unit with Sad Sack Webb left holding the bag, and the women. It's fun, a good escape and don't miss the airplane crash with Mitchum running out of runway, you'll die laughing.

A pity this very funny film has slipped into some sort of limbo lately, though it was common TV fare not too many years ago. It shows just how imaginative a director Jack Webb really was: the picture is full of delightful little directorial touches (most of them quite amusing). The casting of many familiar TV faces was a smart move for it gave nice roles to such stalwarts as Don Knotts, Louis Nye and Joe Flynn, to name a few.Very highly recommended as a most pleasant comedy.It is also a pity that some writers, like the previous reviewer, have to slander Webb's reputation by accusing him of homosexuality. It's a common libel applied to people who are conveniently dead and cannot defend themselves. I wont, of course, even dignify the writer's accusation by answering it, but will only say that Mr Webb's life and life's work speaks for itself.

This movie combines features of the WWII Aviation Cadet program (Preflight), Civilian Pilot Training Program, and O.C.S. It is not like any of them as An Officer and a Gentleman is not like any USN program. However, I would think that the writer had been in one of the programs to get it so right as to how the guys interact with each other and with the military. I am the product of such a program (Aviation Cadets) and saw much to identify with. From the writer's list of credits, covering ever year of WWII it doesn't seen that he could have been in the military. Still, he got it right. The first time I saw the movie I thought the spy subplot was a stupid filler but I enjoyed it much more in later viewings.

By 1960, "Dragnet" had been cancelled, and so had all of Mark VII LTD's other TV series. Webb's intention was to do theatrical films from now on. Then he made this film."The Last Time I Saw Archie" is a series of comedy vignettes hooked on a true life situation - a stateside camp consisting of "leftovers" from a program designed to train pilots too old for combat duty during WWII. (The program was cancelled because the war was winding down.) Robert Mitchum plays Pvt. Archie Hall, a schemer who manages to convince everyone around him that he's more important than his rank indicates. Webb is Pvt. Bill Bowers (the same man who wrote the screenplay), the buddy who goes along for the ride. During the course of the film, Archie avoids all the mundane duties of military life, finds girlfriends for himself and Bowers, and secures an unrestricted pass and a private jeep.FACTOID: The film was Webb's most expensive production; it cost about $2 million. It was also his biggest flop, grossing about $1.2 million. Webb would never again make a theatrical feature. Five years later, he'd be back to playing Sgt. Friday.