Friday, August 08, 2014

Movie review - "Francis in the Navy" (1955) **

The last Francis film from Arthur Lubin and Donald O'Connor is chiefly memorable for two things: the first sizeable screen role for Clint Eastwood and the fact that Francis is barely in it.

Tacking Clint first - he pops up in a bunch of Universal movies around this time, normally as a pilot, science assistant or random guard but here he actually has some lines. It's not much of a part - he's one of several navy friends of a womanising guy - and could technically have been cut out of the film but he does have something to do. (Universal must have wanted to trial several newcomers in this movie - also appearing is David Janssen and Martin Milner, with Martha Hyer as the starlet.)

The second issue is more glaring and problematic. The story starts with O'Connor trying to rescue Francis from being auctioned off, which is a good, solid starting basis for a Francis picture... then becomes about O'Connor being confused for a lookalike, a womanising war hero navy guy called Slicker, whose name is said far too often. Everyone thinks O'Connor is Slicker including his mates (such as Eastwood), sister (Hyer) and officer (Jim Backus).

While it's fun to see O'Connor play a different role, they don't do enough with the identical twins thing - this is no Prisoner of Zenda with baddies out to kill one of the, and ensuring excitement/plot development, there's just a series of adventures. Slicker encourages the swap, but not out of desire to do anything bad, just make mischief, and good O'Connor goes along with it to be a nice guy - which completely robs the piece of any stakes. (Why not get enemy agents involved? Or gangsters?)

It also shamefully repeats gags of O'Connor being whisked off to see shrinks because people think he's crazy... only hear it's not because of Francis, it's since he insists he's not Slicker. Which just isn't funny since it's so easy to prove.

Francis does hardly anything - he helps O'Connor win a boxing match and periodically pops in, but could have been cut out of the whole movie.

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