Standby for Action starts off as a conventional war movie, and a good one at that. The tone is mostly serious, and the story very interesting. However, transporting (and delivering) babies on a destroyer... during combat with a Japanese battleship, mind you... jumps the shark, so to speak. The serious war movie becomes a screwball comedy, and then a serious war movie again.
Had they stuck to the story of the grizzled, former enlisted commanding officer, and a young, brash, never-had-responsibility Harvard first officer, it might have been a GREAT war movie. It certainly had all the elements, including special effects that were good enough to impress even today, especially the scenes where the Japanese pilots spot the convoy.
Even so, it's definitely worth watching, despite the great flaw of what feels like two distinct scripts being merged by fiat, and not very well.
Had they stuck to the story of the grizzled, former enlisted commanding officer, and a young, brash, never-had-responsibility Harvard first officer, it might have been a GREAT war movie. It certainly had all the elements, including special effects that were good enough to impress even today, especially the scenes where the Japanese pilots spot the convoy.
Even so, it's definitely worth watching, despite the great flaw of what feels like two distinct scripts being merged by fiat, and not very well.