At War With the Army (1950, Hal Walker) (Patreon)

51/100

Only my second Martin and Lewis experience, and I'm guessing that this one's a whole lot more representative than was the Tashlin-tastic Artists and Models. Think maybe I've begun to settle on a thesis regarding vintage Lewis, viz. that his grating (to me, anyway) adenoidal persona can obscure his genuine gift for silent physical comedy. Whenever he's speaking, I find him insufferable, but give the kid a tiny bit of business—Pvt. Korwin being ordered, for example, to use a particular door and walk all the way around the building, even though his destination is literally inches away through a different door—and he launches into a magnificent fusillade of tics, hitches, and half-motions, creating comedy out of virtually nothing. You can really see how much Jim Carrey borrowed from him, and Chevy Chase just blatantly ripped off his mock-an-authority-figure-by-cartoonishly-mimicking-his-every-word-behind-his-back routine (though that probably predates Lewis as well). Still don't really grasp the essence of the partnership, as they work more in opposition than tandem; when Dino performs a solo number, Lewis remains on-camera in the background throughout but remains perfectly still, turned away from us, so as not to risk stealing focus. In any case, the main problem with their first star vehicle is that it's been adapted from what, on this evidence, appears to be a singularly unfunny stage play, replete with such ostensibly witty exchanges as "Didn't you like it a little?" "I didn't even like it a lot." Eventually, multiple subplots converge to provide a mild quasi-farcical burst of energy for the finale, but the movie tends to flatline whenever Lewis isn't upstaging its bland military "satire," and I wished that I were flatlining roughly half the time that he is. Most interesting by far, albeit not terribly amusing, is the stretch that puts him in drag (reportedly invented for the film)—he makes no effort whatsoever to exaggerate femininity, but neither does he remain in spastic man-child character, instead providing a tiny glimpse of the irascibility that he would adopt in middle age and beyond. He almost looks like a different person, in fact, and it's not because of the wig or the dress; his very face seems to change, somehow, becoming hard and unyielding. The mask briefly drops.