Instant Favorite.

Absolutely Brilliant!

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I have never expected a great deal from Bob Hope's comedies and know perfectly well that his films were meant to amuse their audiences in a lighthearted, unpretentious way. Hope was always the same as an actor but even his sameness was somewhat brilliant and I tend to like him. I remember having had lots of fun seeing THE PALEFACE, Paris HOLIDAY, BACHELOR IN PARADISE and other of his films. THE PRIVATE NAVY OF SGT. O'FARRELL is just an average effort. Frank Tashlin was an excellent director but this is not one of his major comedies. The plot could have resulted in a more substantial screenplay, in better devised and more entertaining comic scenes. The film has an obvious 60's look and no effort was made to give it a more authentic 40's atmosphere. Hope and Diller are their usual selves, and occasionally make one laugh. Gina Lollobrigida is as beautiful as ever but has very little to do. As usual, she is merely seen as a decorative presence. She could be so much more, as we know from films such as COME September, HOTEL PARADISO and BUONA SERA, MRS. CAMPBELL. Mylène Demongeot does a sort of cameo. It would have been to the film's advantage to give her more screen time.

By the time Bob Hope got to making The Private Navy of Sgt O'Farrell the comedy well was running a bit dry. Thiw was material that he could have done 20 years before, during the post World War II period. Somebody must have gotten an idea for this film noticing that in McHale's Navy, Ernest Borgnine, Tim Conway and the gang had their own personal Japanese prisoner. So a whole film was built around a leftover Japanese soldier on the backwater island that Hope is stationed on. Hope has his own Ensign Parker in Jeffrey Hunter and his own Captain Binghamton in John Myhers.We've got both Army and Navy personnel here though the Navy seems to be in charge. John Myhers is no Joe Flynn with that officious monotone as Captain Binghamton. And no one would ever say that Jeffrey Hunter had Tim Conway's gift for comedy.And Hope looks every bit of the 65 years he had under his belt when this film was made. He ought to have been stateside collecting those first Social Security checks issued.Mako does well as Calvin Coolidge Ishimura an American Japanese who had the misfortune to be visiting relatives in the old country at the time of Pearl Harbor. And Phyllis Diller as the man starved nurse Krauss earns a few laughs.The film is about Hope's pursuit of a sunken supply ship that was loaded with beer. From what I remember of the army it probably would have been near beer which was all an enlisted man could get on Fort Polk, so I didn't see what the fuss was about. Frank Tashlin the director clearly ripped this one off from the classic British comedy Whiskey Galore.Joke kind of fell flat as the beer probably was.

They billed "The Loved One" as the film with something to offend everyone, but this one probably wouldn't fall too far behind to those of a politically correct mind set! Hope plays a US Army sergeant during WWII stationed on a Pacific island which is shared with the US Navy. When a supply ship carrying beer (!) to the island is blown up, he worries about the morale of the men and decides to ship in some pretty nurses. Unfortunately, he gets more than he bargained for in zany, fright-wigged Diller and decides to go back to hunting down the lost beer! He teams up with Navy lieutenant Hunter and a band of other misfit soldiers in trying to reclaim the many, many beer cans which are floating in the ocean and, in some cases, at the bottom of it. Meanwhile, Hope rekindles a love affair with curvy Lollobrigida and, in his spare time, manages to fight the war, almost inadvertently! Of course, it's a comedy, so not all the story points can be taken seriously, but it's really off-center. Set in the 40's, but with all the hair, makeup, clothes and attitudes of the 60's, it's mind-bendingly inaccurate throughout. Also, Hope's treatment of an American Indian soldier in the film is really pushing the limits of good taste. It's very bizarre that a film lampooning the military and featuring such lazy, beer-guzzling, inane soldiers as these could be released right in the middle of the savage and unsettling Vietnam War, but here it is. Still, despite these and other examples of thoughtlessness and idiocy, the film does have more than a few highly comic moments. Hope manages to toss off a few amusing zingers (along with the requisite insults to his old pal Bing Crosby!) Diller is pretty crazy and has a memorable entrance as Hope awaits the "lovely" nurses on an air strip. Hunter shows off a surprisingly energetic and adept comedic touch and is exceedingly handsome with his dark tan and crystal blue eyes. Mako turns up as a Japanese-American and does a nice job as well. Wilcoxon, as a commanding officer, is a long way from C.B. de Mille, but appears to be having a good time, in any case. Many familiar TV faces dot the cast of soldiers including "Bewiched"'s Sergent, "Mork & Mindy"'s Donner and "M*A*S*H"'s Christopher (virtually unrecognizable without his glasses and brogue.) Lollobrigida is unbelievably sexy in a sensational bikini and tries hard to bring a little verve to the film. To describe Demongeot's "role" as window dressing is an understatement. She hardly appears at all and says almost nothing. There's a surprising amount of beefcake on display, despite all the chatter about sexy nurses. Hunter appears in a large fig leaf in one amusing dream sequence and, curiously, Wellman performs virtually the entire film with no shirt on. Even Hope has a scene with his shirt nearly off! The humor runs hot and cold (and most of the story is preposterous, including Hope's big "catch" at the end), but as light entertainment it's not too bad (and it has the benefit of being shot mostly outdoors on some pretty beaches.) It's not for anyone who gets offended by stereotyping, though.

May contain SPOILERS:I approached Bob Hope's and Phyllis Diller's 3rd and final "epic" with some trepidation. After the mediocre "Eight on the Lam" and the dire "Boy, Did I Get A Wrong Number!", I wasn't expecting much. However, I am a huge fan of Gina Lollobrigida(billed here as "Miss Gina Lollobrigida") so I decided to give it a chance and I was pleasantly surprised. While no classic and far from great Hope, "The Private Navy of Sergeant O'Farrell" is an amiable, easy-to-take farce in the "McHale's Navy" vein and is Hope's best film from a not-so-great period(1964-1972) in his film career. Basically Hope and his men are fighting WWII in the 1960s, not the 1940s, replete with anachronisms including references to "watching reruns" in the decade before TV was commonplace in most American homes. Anachronistic highlight is the gorgeous 41-year old Miss Lollobrigida showing off her breathtaking figure in a 1968 bikini complete with 1968 makeup and hairdo in a sequence allegedly set in 1941 Waikiki. Interestingly enough, no reference is made to Italy being Japan's and Germany's ally during WWII. Jeffrey Hunter, most famous for his portrayal of Jesus Christ in "King and Kings" shows a surprising strong aptitude for comic ability as a lieutenant-cum-descendant of John Paul Jones with a propensity to seasickness. In one of the film's daffier subplots he keeps having romantic dreams about Miss Diller! The Adam and Eve sequence is a hoot. Mako shines as a Japanese-American named Calvin Coolidge Ishimura who gets mistaken for an Axis soldier. All of the likable nonsense is well directed by former Warner Brothers cartoonist turned comedy director Frank Tashlin("Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?", "The Glass Bottom Boat"). In a clever moment, Bob and Gina spoof Burt Lancaster's and Deborah Kerr's "From Here To Eternity" beach love scene 12 years prior to Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty did so in the hit spoof "Airplane!"Bottom line: Nothing great but pleasant and worth seeing if you're a fan of Hope or Gina. Too bad they didn't make more films together.Rating: 6 out of 10 or **1/2 out of ****. Makes a good double feature with either of these Cary Grant WWII Pacific Theater comedies: "Operation Petticoat"(1959) or "Father Goose"(1964).