I’m not sure what exactly drove Warner Brothers to remaster and rerelease on DVD a movie from the depths of 1957, but they did it, and they sent me a copy to review. The movie in question is No Time For Sergeants, and it features two of the biggest names in comedy from the fifties–Andy Griffith and Don Knotts. And in a further huge surprise, MASH’s Jaime Farr is here too!
No Time For Sergeants follows Will Stockdale, a young man who’s a real son of the soil–son of a son of a son who knows how far back of Georgia farmers–as he’s about to embark on the adventure of a life time. Will’s been drafted, and somehow, he’s managed to land himself in the Air Force!
The laid-back farmer isn’t what the Air Force had in mind–that’s all right, though, because the Air Force isn’t really what the farmer had in mind either. But since they’re stuck with each other for the duration, well, they’ll just have to try and get along as best they can.
Interestingly enough, the movie version of No Time For Sergeants is based on the Broadway production of the same name, where both Griffith and Knotts reprise their original roles. And frankly, this is hilarious stuff. Griffith has a great talent for playing country boys , and putting a country boy in the middle of this kind of environment, with absolutely no guile or deceit in him, is wildly incongruous and results in hosts of laughs.
In fact, if you were a big fan of the Andy Griffith Show, you’ll enjoy this new and interesting bit of Griffith–he’s almost playing a younger, naive Andy Taylor here, and it really fits well. So much of what’s going on here is Griffith in absolute straight-man mode, where he’s proven to do a fantastic job for decades.
This is why.
And thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale hands No Time For Sergeants an eight out of ten for being (really) old school comedy that will pack plenty of laughs into a package that may be old, but is still perfectly serviceable.
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