Sexylocher Masterful Movie

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

MartinHafer Back in the late 30s and early 40s, just about all the comedians and comedy teams made war films...and they were quite popular. Films like Abbott & Costello's "Buck Privates", Laurel & Hardy's "Great Guns" and Bob Hope's "Caught in the Draft" are just a few of the many films designed to encourage Americans to do the patriotic thing and enlist. And, with a few exceptions ("Great Guns"), the films were very enjoyable. When "Caught in the Draft" begins, Don Bolton (Bob Hope) is a famous and very self-absorbed Hollywood star. He's also quite the coward. So when he learns that there is going to be a draft, he's worried he might be chosen and looks for a way out. And, his way out might be getting married. But his choice is odd...be wants to marry a woman who wants nothing to do with him AND is a colonel's daughter! Antoinette (Dorothy Lamour) sees right through Don and his schemes and instead of being honest, he just creates more and more complicated schemes...one which accidentally gets him to enlist in the Army...and guess who Don's commanding officer is? Along with Don are his lowly gofer (Eddie Bracken) and his agent (Lynne Overman--who is in his mid-50s!).This film is very enjoyable...and perhaps more than "Buck Privates" because it does NOT have any singing! Clever and enjoyable from start to finish, though I wonder why at the end Eddie Bracken's character got a commendation? Watch the film and you'll understand what I mean.

weezeralfalfa Finally, a film were there's no Bing Crosby to steal Dorothy Lamour from Bob Hope in the last segment, as was the usual case in the famous "Road" series. Even in "The Princess and the Pauper", where Virginia Mayo substituted for Dorothy in a raucous farce, Bing showed up at the end to steal the fair damsel away from Hope. David Butler directed that film, as well as the present one. Bing's substitutes in this film: Eddie Bracken and Lynne Overman, were no substitute for the presence of Der Bingle as a foil for Hope, as well as a little singing and dancing. Hope's obstacles to marrying Dorothy included his own cowardice and incompetence, his persistent trickery, and the opposition of Dorothy's father, Colonel Fairbanks, unless he could qualify to be at least a corporal and show evidence of adequate bravery. During his basic training , he lived in fear that Col. Fairbanks would make good his threat to transfer him to another base, if he didn't stop pestering Dorothy, and start showing some competence as a potential soldier.Hope has frequent access to the Colonel's residence during his training, where Dorothy is also residing. We certainly have to wonder how he managed that, and why Dorothy put up with his repetitive bumbling and trickery to chose him as a potential husband. Must be that he is a famous movie actor when not in the army, despite his various phobias and clumsiness.In the beginning, the two things Hope most feared were being drafted and being suckered into a marriage to hopefully avoid being drafted. "That's like cutting your throat to cure laryngitis". Dorothy seemed to be an exception to his fear. Thus, he aggressively pursued marriage to her to hopefully avoid the draft. As you might expect, he ended up married, and in the army, as an involuntary volunteer, we might say.The film begins with Hope, among others, mired in a very muddy trench in WWI. This turns out to be a film shoot. Strangely, Hope is rattled by loud noises, even from a pistol shot, and faints at the sight of his blood. His first meeting with Dorothy and her father, on the movie set, is a disaster, as he mistakes her father for one of the actors, and sprays him with mud. Next, he lands in a gooey mud pit, totally immersed except for his eyes, exclaiming "Mami!", as if he was in blackface.Most of you will probably consider the segment where Hope has to drive a tank the most hilarious. Narrowly missing various disasters, he ends up grazing the side of the Colonel's car, knocking the door off its hinges, after having picked up a pretty nurse along the way... Hope fails miserably as a paratrooper and on the target range....Then, there's the segment where Hope is hiding and being chased around the base hospital. The last segment has Hope and buddies participating in a war game. They become heroes in averting a disaster, are promoted to corporal, and Hope is judged now to be fit to marry Dorothy.Unlike the "Road" series, there is no singing or dancing. Thus, this film totally relies on one liners and physical comedy for its interest Hope and Dorothy made another film during the war without Bing: "They Got Me Covered": a combination comedy and spy thriller, relating to the war. I haven't seen it.

SimonJack The U.S. wasn't at war yet when this film came out on July 4, 1941. But, the war in Europe had begun nearly two years earlier when Germany invaded Poland (September 1939). America soon began providing aid to England and it was only a matter of time before the U.S. would enter the fighting. Of course, no one knew how that would happen when in just five months the Japanese would bomb Pearl Harbor. So, what's this history got to do with "Caught in the Draft?" This film, and others like it were being made in Hollywood in anticipation of America's entry into the war. This is one of a handful of films that treated induction and enlistment in the Armed Forces with humor. Just six months earlier, Abbott and Costello's "Buck Privates" debuted. It poked fun at some of the training and Army life in boot camp, with Lou as a hilarious misfit. Others of theirs would follow with the boys in the Navy and the Army Air Corps (which would become the U.S. Air Force after WWII). This film with Bob Hope is an unusual comedy piece for him. Hope's trademark comedy developed around dialog and funny scenes. But here, he shows some zaniness of antics not unlike those of the Marx Brothers, or even the Three Stooges. Bob is not the bumbling fool or inept soldier that Costello and others portrayed. He has a head on his shoulders, and is cunning with an eye on the Colonel's daughter. Dorothy Lamour plays Tony Fairbanks, daughter of Col. Peter Fairbanks, played by Clarence Kolb. But Hope's Don Bolton has a couple of buddies whose miscues often wind him up in trouble. Lynne Overman plays Steve Riggs and Eddie Bracken plays Bert Sparks. Bolton goes through a series of situations and encounters that have funny mishap results. Aside from the KP duty and GIs standing watch, this film has little else that could be considered realistic about boot camp, training or the Army – even way back then. The incongruous things are part of what makes this film so funny. Bolton enters basic training and is able to get leave or take time to visit the Colonel's daughter on post. He becomes a driver in boot camp. He drives a tank in some very hilarious scenes. And he even goes up in an airplane to train for the new parachutist units. All of this is far-reached. No Army base had all of those types of units, nor did boot camp ever expose men to those fields. The American parachute forces were just being formed for training in the summer of 1941 at Ft. Benning, GA. But these various types of Army units and training for them are the basis of a wacky plot that is filled with humor. No doubt this and similar films helped prepare the public, and many men, for military service. And, the light and funny treatment of military training may have helped ease tensions and the apprehensions the public otherwise may have had about preparing for war. But today, many decades later, we can look at dated films like this and appreciate them for the time and culture they represented. And, we should also enjoy the comedy. It's a type that never becomes outdated. I enjoy this film more than any of the seven "Road" films that Hope and Bing Crosby made together, beginning in 1940 and into 1962. This is a nice look at Bob Hope's early film comedy that was refreshing and original, before the Road movies and other later films used the technique of the actors talking to the audience at times. I think modern audiences today should enjoy this film, and the kids should get a kick out of some of the funny antics.

tedthomasson I saw this movie when it was re-released as a supporting feature at a cinema here in Melbourne about 1951. Don't remember much about it, except the scene where the hero (Hope) loses control of a tank and runs it into the side of the colonel's Cadillac limo (it might have been a Chrysler) but the audience was appalled, as I was, because luxury cars like this were rarely seen here in those years. It wasn't faked either, as I recall. Can someone advise what the car was? I'm compiling a list of cars used in the movies. Apart from that I thought it was a quite passable comedy and I'm hoping it might come up on late-nite TV sometime as they have occasionally shown other Paramount movies of the era. TT.