Lauded at the time as an epic laugh riot with an added message of peace and understanding between global rivals, today the movie comes off (to the BQ, anyway) as obvious, shrill, hammy and surprisingly absent of any genuine wit or humor....
The comedy, such at it is, springs from a large cast of actors screaming in panicked or enraged hysteria. At the top of their lungs, they play a collection of caricatured New England islanders, agog at the landing of a crew of Soviet submariners led by Alan Arkin. The largely comic opera Reds seek a boat to tow their sub off a sand bar, the result of a foolhardy navigation error by their blowhard, idiot captain (Theodore Bikel)....
Much huffing, puffing and gun toting ensues from the locals.....even sabre-rattling, courtesy of the island's military home defense loon (Paul Ford). The effect is like watching a two hour version of the brief comedic scene in "Jaws" involving the chaotic flotilla of would be shark hunters taking to the open sea.....except on land....
Taken from a Nathaniel Benchley novel and scripted by William Rose, it's really nothing more than a slightly scaled down version of Rose's script for "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World"......a large cast of loud American boobs randomly yelling at each other.....only this time it's Russians and not greed that fuels their fury. Rose can't write a single funny line for any of these people......he can only bounce them off each other like pinballs....
A few odds and ends still stand out......Arkin's heavily accented working-stiff Russian, gaining his own share of steady laughs, all by himself, with no help from the script.....the late great under-appreciated Brian Keith as the slow burn town sheriff.....the not very funny but decidedly strenuous work put in by the rest of the cast including Carl Reiner and Jonathon Winters........and last and horribly least, the child 'actor' (we use the term actor loosely here) tasked with playing Reiner's repulsive little boy, Every time this kid opened his toxic mouth, we prayed for the Russians to machine gun him and put Reiner and the audience out of their misery....
After all the heavy lifting of keeping this cast in perpetual frenzy, director Norman Jewison cemented the film;s iconic reputation with its finale plot twist, which could have come straight out of a Frank Capra movie.......a bold choice for an American movie, given the way-below-zero temperature of the Cold War. (And the film's feel good climax still stands apart today, since post-communist Russia remains a dangerous, implacable foe, ruled by a KGB reptile still steeped in thuggery..)
As we said, "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!" can make you smile at the thought of it.........just don't expect it to keep you convulsed in belly laughs should you encounter it for real....lots of noise, minimal laughs....2 & 1/2 hammer-and-sickles...(** 1/2)
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