Wallace Beery is just fine in this military comedy/drama, released ironically right after Pearl Harbor, and the timing couldn't have been better. The issue with Beery is that he's playing the same character once again for the umpteenth time, pleasantly, but nonetheless the same. He's an army first sergeant responsible for training horses, reassigned to training men, learning himself how to drive a tank. He's a one man battering ram tearing down a forest filled with trees, the tank looking like a giant elephant running through the woods. Of course poor judgment gets him into all sorts of trouble and threatens his long term romance with hotel owner Marjorie Main who puts up with a lot of his shenanigans until he goes too far.
It's Main who walks off with the film, a performance filled with many layers. She's loud and brassy at first, but with a sparkle that reveals the fun loving side of her disciplinary character, soft spoken and nearly in tears when worried about the trouble he's in, and then shutting her heart off to him when he tries to get back into her good graces after he's exposed. Of course he's going to make good, taking on a group of saboteurs led by the sinister looking Roman Bohnen.
Beery and Main have a good supporting cast including Donna Reed and William Lundigan as the young lovers, Henry O'Neill and Lewis Stone as his commanding officers, and George Bancroft and Chill Wills as well. Ernest Whitman gets a few good scenes as Main's black chef, speaking far more intelligently than most other black characters of the time.
This gets much better as it goes on as the saboteur plot is revealed, so the lighter opening is replaced by something more dramatic, ultimately topping off with a typical flag waving patriotism finale, already started through the opening booming voiced narration of MGM's publicity agent Frank Whitbeck.
It's Main who walks off with the film, a performance filled with many layers. She's loud and brassy at first, but with a sparkle that reveals the fun loving side of her disciplinary character, soft spoken and nearly in tears when worried about the trouble he's in, and then shutting her heart off to him when he tries to get back into her good graces after he's exposed. Of course he's going to make good, taking on a group of saboteurs led by the sinister looking Roman Bohnen.
Beery and Main have a good supporting cast including Donna Reed and William Lundigan as the young lovers, Henry O'Neill and Lewis Stone as his commanding officers, and George Bancroft and Chill Wills as well. Ernest Whitman gets a few good scenes as Main's black chef, speaking far more intelligently than most other black characters of the time.
This gets much better as it goes on as the saboteur plot is revealed, so the lighter opening is replaced by something more dramatic, ultimately topping off with a typical flag waving patriotism finale, already started through the opening booming voiced narration of MGM's publicity agent Frank Whitbeck.