Union Blue Comedy

Advance to the Rear. Since any departure from formula comedy seems worthy, a slapstick farce about the Civil War perhaps deserves a nod for trying a different attack. This frolic manages, however, to be unremittingly fast, flip, energetic, and for the most part humorless. Based on a sober historical novel by Jack Schaefer (Shane), the movie attempts to spark laughs by logging the misadventures of Company Q, a detachment of Yankee misfits led by inept Colonel Melvyn Douglas and his wry-smiling lieutenant, Glenn Ford. The boobs under their command include a firebug, a flagpole sitter, a kleptomaniac, a skittish soldier afflicted with an untimely burp, and assorted psychopaths.

Enroute to Fort Hooker, an outpost "so far west they'll never be heard from again," the lads in Union Blue board a river boat where they reconnoiter a contingent of bawds house-mothered by Joan Blondell and infiltrated by Stella Stevens, a Confederate spy. As an anti-hero of such indolent disposition that he lets a lady in distress fend off a villain singlehandedly, Ford appears bemused when he should be amusing. Douglas looks plain uncomfortable, and well he might. He gets caught under collapsing tents, heads a sandy downhill charge sitting on skis made from barrel staves, finally leads his men--all wearing nothing but droopy long underwear--in a rampageous free-for-all with renegades who are trying to highjack a shipment of Union gold. Bringing the Civil War era to life in Mack Sennett style calls for a tricky blend of taste and ingenuity that few have tried since Buster Keaton's The General, a silent classic of 1926. In Rear, a whole platoon of actors work up a sweat doing the funny business that one real comedian might have tripped through with ease.

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