A Man Called Sarge (1990)

                “A Man Called Sarge” is a war movie satire written and directed by Stuart Gillard.  He was noted for TV series and TV movies.  This movie did not break him out of that.  You would think the war movie genre, with its plethora of stereotypes and cliches, would be ripe for parody. However, few attempts have been successful.  For every “Tropic Thunder”, there are ten “A Man Called Sarge” misfires.    “Sarge” is one of the attempts that believed silly makes for great humor.  It also is of the ilk that believes that quantity of jokes is preferable to quality.  “Sarge” was clearly hoping to emulate “Airplane”, but it does not belong in the same sentence.  The public agreed as the film made only $92,000.  It didn’t lose much as the budget could not have been much higher than that.  The cheapness started with the cast which was headlined by Gary Kroeger.  He was five years past a four- year stint on “Saturday Night Live”.  The only other recognizable star was Marc Singer, who had a nice career making low budget films.  This one did not appear at the top of his resume.

                Sgt. Luke Roscoe (Kroeger) and his motley crew of stereotypes are in North Africa in WWII. The funniest thing about the movie is the names of the squad members.  They include a bespectacled Jew named Steinmetz, an Indian named Bearpaw, a fat guy named Billy Bob McAlpine, and Pvt. Anzalone from New York, of course.  Their foe is a Nazi officer named Gen. Von Kraut (Marc Singer). They hook up with the French Foreign Legion and have the mission of blowing up a fuel dump.  Do you really need to know more of the plot than that?  It’s just an excuse for sight gags and jokes.  Bad ones.

                It’s hard to figure what Gillard was thinking when he wrote the screenplay.  He does not go after the obvious cliches and although the squad is stereotypes, no fun is made of them.  It plays as an extended Benny Hill skit.  You even have supposedly hilarious moments when the film is run backwards or fast.  This is not sophomoric humor, it’s more like grade school.  This one gag will exemplify them all.  A character tells the soldiers to take their seats, so they literally take their seats.  Not funny, and not original.  There is a running gag involving ducks.  Don’t ask.  The movie does have one scene where “Casablanca” is parodied, but it is hardly a reason to suffer through the rest of the movie.  You have to admire the cast for sticking with the film when it was probably obvious from day one of shooting that they were in a dog.  Singer stands out because he was clearly having fun.  I would guess he was pretty embarrassed in watching the finished product, however.  As far as Kroeger, the movie spring-boarded him to a game show host career.

                I kept track of my reactions to the numerous jokes.  I smiled 17 times and groaned 25 times.  I did not laugh out loud a single time. You definitely need to be drinking heavily to change the smiles into laughs and the groans into smiles.  You may react more positively, but I would not watch this movie just so you can see if you will break my laugh record.  It is a truly terrible movie.  When you consider the effort and resources that went into the movie, this bomb was ticking from the start of production. 

 

GRADE  =  F