Movie review – “Don’t Give Up the Ship” (1959) **1/2

Enlistment must have gone up whenever Jerry Lewis made a service comedy – the US army and navy were always co-operating with his films, even though they often depicted Jerry thriving despite his incompetence, and petty officers in authority.

Jerry Lewis plays a different sort of character here – a naval officer, from a family with a rich naval tradition (three’s an amusing montage at the beginning flashing back to the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, etc). He’s still an idiot, though – accused of losing a destroyer, the navy present him with a five million dollar bill. The navy is convinced he might be a spy and send in an officer from naval intelligence (Dina Merrill) to investigate.

After a long set up, act two flash backs to Jerry’s war service in the Pacific, where he manages to get promoted despite being an idiot. He winds up on an island and is captured by the Japanese, who because the war is over are actually quite benign here. Instead of having a romance between Jerry and Dina Merrill, there’s also a major subplot about Jerry getting arrested on his wedding day and being unable to consummate his marriage for the duration of the film. (They do play a jealous angle from his new wife and there is a hot scene where Merrill and Jerry share a train sleep compartment, and she’s naked under a sheet. It would have been either hotter if either of them had been up for it.) There's this last sequence with Jerry and Mickey Shaughnessy prowling around under water. And it’s all resolved with a deux ex machina which reveals that the investigating senator (Gale Gordon) is the one responsible for the ship being destroyed. It's a very disjointed, ramshackle movie.

Which is not to say it isn't fun. Director Norman Taurog keeps everything bubbling along at a fair clip and there are some very funny moments including Jerry asking birds on an island to be quiet and they comply, Jerry interrogating Mickey Shaughnessy while the latter is in the middle of a wrestling match, and Jerry’s sexual frustration (the late 50s leer humour had taken hold).