Buck Privates

Though Bud Abbott and Lou Costello made their last film before I was born, I, like many of my age group, are well acquainted with them. When I was growing up, one of my local TV stations played an Abbott and Costello film every Sunday morning, playing them all in sequence. Therefore, I don't know how many times I've seen Buck Privates, but I hadn't seen it in many years until last night.

Unlike Laurel and Hardy, The Marx Brothers, or Charlie Chaplin, I don't think A&C have weathered the test of time. Aside from the "Who's On First" routine, I don't laugh much at their antics anymore. Watching Buck Privates again I didn't laugh at all--just a few mild smiles. 

But they were huge in their time, and Buck Privates, released in 1941, made them stars, transitioning from radio. While watching it I was more interested in viewing it in context, as it's about army life just before the United States entered World War II.

The film begins with a newsreel showing the beginning of the peacetime draft in 1940. Bud and Lou are selling ties illegally on the street and get chased into what they think is a movie theater, but is actually the draft processing center. Faced with a choice of jail or the army, they pick the latter.

The film plays almost as a recruiting film. The Army is presented as a means to turn boys into men. The main plot features Lee Bowman as a pampered playboy who expects his father to get him out, but he is forced to stay, and learns the value of duty and comradeship. It makes the Army seem like fun, and except for a sergeant who has it in for Lou (played by Nat Pendleton, a former body builder who a frequent foil) the officers are all kind.

The comedy bits seem tired even by 1941 standards. There is a boxing match, with Lou facing a hulking monster, but boxing bits had already been done, and better, by Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy. There is more physical comedy with Bud drilling Lou and the chubby man mistaking right face and left face (this also brings out Bud's meanness. Unlike Laurel and Hardy, there is no evidence that the men actually liked each other.

I like the wordplay comedy better, such as a bit when Bud asks to borrow fifty dollars from Lou. Lou only has forty, so Bud says okay, I'll take that and you owe me ten, and soon Lou has no money left. There's also a dangerous bit with Bud presenting Lou with a math problem about the age difference between Lou and a girl.

I feel like I'm being hard on the boys but watching their films today just doesn't do it for me. I think the highlight of this film is the Andrews Sisters singing "The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy From Company B." I could watch that over and over.