The Wackiest Ship In The Army is directed by Richard Murphy and written by Herbert Carlson. It stars Jack Lemmon, Ricky Nelson & Chips Rafferty. It's filmed in CinemaScope and Eastman Color on location at Pearl Harbour & Kauai (Charles Lawton Jr. director of photography).
The basis for the film is to thrust the bemused Lemmon onto a past its sell by date schooner, and surround him with sea-faring characters who don't know a stern from a mast. Cue confusion with a mission that nobody is all too clear about and you get a knockabout farce launched from an Australian port in 1943. The writing unleashes the usual staples of people banging their heads on things, falling overboard and pulling exasperated looks from time to time. The last third of the picture oddly shifts to something resembling drama as the mission unfolds, but it's an awkward fit and one has to wonder what the intention of the makers was from the off.
Funny in parts but dreary in others, the film is only watchable for Lemmon's gusto and Lawton Jr's lovely CinemaScope photography. 5/10
The basis for the film is to thrust the bemused Lemmon onto a past its sell by date schooner, and surround him with sea-faring characters who don't know a stern from a mast. Cue confusion with a mission that nobody is all too clear about and you get a knockabout farce launched from an Australian port in 1943. The writing unleashes the usual staples of people banging their heads on things, falling overboard and pulling exasperated looks from time to time. The last third of the picture oddly shifts to something resembling drama as the mission unfolds, but it's an awkward fit and one has to wonder what the intention of the makers was from the off.
Funny in parts but dreary in others, the film is only watchable for Lemmon's gusto and Lawton Jr's lovely CinemaScope photography. 5/10