It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

This is an excellent movie. Andy Griffith in the lead role as easy-going, always well- meaning Will Stockdale is a joy to behold. Having played this part on Broadway, Griffith had a long time to hone his performance. His performance is delightful. Nick Adams, who did not have the benefit of a long Broadway run to develop his performance, is well able to keep pace with Griffith, exhibiting a fine sense of comedic timing that was rarely utilized in his future choice of roles (unfortunately). Myron McCormick, another veteran of the Broadway production, delivers an equally deft comedic performance. In fact, the entire cast, down to the smallest role, delivers high-quality performances that make this film entertaining to watch over and over again. I highly recommend this well-made film as an example of the happy result of the collaboration of talented professionals.

"Little Caesar" director Mervyn LeRoy launched Andy Griffith's career as a lightweight comedian with the military service comedy "No Time for Sergeants" co-starring Don Knotts, Raymond Bailey, and Myron McCormick. Mac Hyman's 1954 bestseller was adapted initially as an episode of the television anthology series "The United States Steel Hour" in 1955 and was later turned into a Broadway play written by Ira Levin. Griffith and McCormick appeared in the play along with Knotts who made his stage debut. Eventually, by 1958, the success of the television show and the Broadway play spawned the Warner Brothers' release with Griffith, McCormick, Knotts and many of the original cast reprising their roles. This is a hilarious movie about a Georgia hillbilly who is drafted into the U.S. Air Force. Will Stockdale (Andy Griffith of "A Face in the Crowd") lives on a remote farm with his father, Pa Stockdale (veteran B-movie character actor William Fawcett), who has been destroying the letters that the draft board has been sending. A representative from the draft board, Mr. McKinney (Dub Taylor of "Bonnie & Clyde"), arrives and drags Will off in handcuffs. At the draft board in town, McKinney cuffs Will to an old fashioned gas pump with a crank handle and leaves the new recruits under the supervision of a former ROTC cadet, Irving S. Blanchard (Murray Hamilton of "Jaws"), who thinks that he is Mr. Cool incarnate. The last recruit to arrive at the bus depot is Ben Whitledge (a bespectacled Nick Adams of "Hell Is For Heroes") who has a letter that he must get to the commandant of the base where they are bound. Several generations of Ben's family have served in the infantry, and Ben wants desperately to get a transfer into the Army. When Irving takes Ben's letter away from him to read it, Will intervenes after he pulls the crank handle off the pump. This represents Will's first demonstration of his strength.Basically, everybody believes that Will is a hick. Of course, they are correct in most respects. At the U.S.A.F boot camp, Master Sergeant Orville C. King (Myron McCormick of "Winterset")presides over the recruits. No sooner have the recruits settled in than they ridicule Will for being a country bumpkin. Quickly, Will displays his prowess in hand-to-hand combat and licks Irving and his cohorts. This ruckus awakens the sleeping Sgt. King who punishes Will by putting him in charge of the latrine. King emphasizes that the latrine needs to be sparkling when the base captain inspects it. Much to King's surprise, Will polishes everything until it gleams. When the Captain inspects the latrine, he is astonished. King is basking in this glory until Will informs the captain that King has made him a 'P.L.O.,' otherwise known as a Permanent Latrine Orderly. At the same time, King has kept Will in the latrine rather than sending him off with the other recruits to participate in all the required military exams and paper work. The Captain threatens to bust King to a private if he doesn't have Will classified. Meantime, Ben groans miserably about being in the air force and Will tries to get King to get them a transfer. King wants to make Will look inferior to the rest of them so Irving and he take Will to a night club and try to get him drunk. Ironically, Will guzzles everything that they put in front of him from a bigger glasses and doesn't even get tipsy. He explains afterward that he was weened on his pappy's moonshine. Will leaves about the same time that King and Irving get into a brawl with an infantryman. Miraculously, King evades the Military Police, but he is caught entering the barracks and busted to private. During this amusing scene, Will demonstrates to the Base Colonel (Raymond Bailey of "The Beverly Hillbillies")a contraption that enables him to raise all the steer horned toilet seats to attention."No Time for Sergeants" was produced during a simpler time when comedy was more straightforward and less profane. The irony again is that everybody mistakes Will for an idiot when he has more common sense that most of them. The concluding scene has Will and Ben in a B-25 flying into an arena when the Army plans to detonate an A-bomb. Our heroes bail out but the B-25 reverses course and lands without damage. Now, the military praises the sacrifice that Will and Pete made until the Generals who concocted the ceremony has to quickly fix things. The comedy is clean and cute and Griffith has a field day making everybody else look like idiots. "No Time for Sergeants" is a memorably side-splitting movie not to be missed.

I kind of like comedies that truly work. They come around so rarely. I've never read the novel but I've seen the filmed play, which also starred Andy Griffith and there have been only a few changes, mostly not for the better. The play was by Ira Levin. He's gone now but must have been quite a guy, his tongue permanently in his cheek. He had sufficient role distance to make fun of the premise of "The Boys From Brazil," his own work.This was Levin's first produced play and it's extremely amusing. It's about a barefoot hillbilly (Griffith) inducted into the U. S. Air Force, acquiring a friend with low esteem, and tangling with a Master Sergeant in charge of the barracks during basic training.Griffith's character is big, strong, stupidly candid, naively enthusiastic, clumsy, almost impervious to insults, friendly, helpful, kind, cheerful, brave, and reverent, the kind of guy who would help little old ladies across the street. Maybe it was Boy Scout basic training.Nick Adams' role doesn't amount to much. He's there chiefly to explain to the monumentally rustic Griffith (and to the viewer) what's going on. Murray Hamilton as an arrogant recruit is better. But Griffith gets great help from Myron McCormick as the Sergeant. McCormick is one of those mid-level bureaucrats who wants to see everything flow smoothly along -- no waves -- without disturbing the higher echelon, so he can collect his pension after twenty or thirty years of polite penal servitude. Griffith's arrival not only makes waves. It sinks the boat.The comedy builds upon itself, getting more complicated and more funny, although the third act has its weak moments -- a scene built around a rogue airplane that might have come directly out of an Abbott and Costello movie. But, no matter. Not only do the absurdities accumulate logically but the story is sprinkled with one liners that both nail Griffith's naiveté and are funny in themselves. At Lights Out on his first night in the barracks, a bugle sounds taps. Griffith stands at the window, looking out wonderingly, and muses, "Somebody brung his trumpet." It's really amusing.

For those of you who know Andy Griffith best as the country wise sheriff of Mayberry or as the slick country lawyer Ben Matlock it might come as a surprise that Griffith got his first big career break playing that most ingenuous of military draftees Will Stockdale in No Time For Sergeants first on Broadway and then in this film version. Griffith is such a hick he makes Gomer Pyle look as sophisticated as Noel Coward.Stockdale is one of those people who glides through life while chaos erupts all around him. Because his father William Fawcett had kept his draft letters from him, when the Air Force finally does come to get him. The man whom the chaos effects the most is his sergeant at the classification center played by Myron McCormick in the best world weary tradition he can muster.Stockdale's best friend is Nick Adams, a kid from a military tradition family who wants the Army Infantry and not the Air Force and bemoans his fate through most of the film. He convinces Griffith of the fact that the infantry does the real fighting and everyone else just helps out occasionally. Like many other things Griffith takes them to heart and repeats them verbatim always at the wrong time. It's the heart of the humor in No Time For Sergeants.No Time For Sergeants ran for 796 performances on Broadway during the 1955-57 season and Griffith, McCormick, Don Knotts, and James Milhollin all repeat their roles from Broadway. This not the Andy Griffith Show is the first time Knotts and Griffith work together. Knotts plays a corporal at the classification center administering the manual dexterity test and how Griffith solves it is Gordian Knot like. But his session with psychiatrist James Millhollin is the funniest thing in the film. No Time For Sergeants is one of the best military comedies ever done on stage and screen. Do not miss it if broadcast.