'THE HORIZONTAL LIEUTENANT'.........THE CUTE TALL KIDS IN ANOTHER UNWORTHY COMEDY......

 The Horizontal Lieutenant (1962)

     We always loved the idea of paring tall, gangly Jim Hutton (yep, father of Timothy) with tall gangly, yet still adorably sexy Paula Prentiss.

      So did Hollywood producers, who threw them together in glossy light comedies throughout the early to mid 1960's....starting with 1960's "Where The Boys Are".

        What their films together never gave them was anything close to a decent script that would take full advantage of their expert comedic timing, awkward physicality and their ability to look like a "cutest couple" photo ripped out of a college yearbook. 

        What they got instead was formulaic, studio machine-tooled fluff, devoid not only of any witty repartee they could've hit out of the park, but even anything remotely amusing. 

         This pointless junker, Hutton and Prentiss's fourth film as a duo, fell into that odd curious Hollywood genre that thrived throughout the 1950's and 60's.....the World War Two military comedy without a single laugh anywhere in sight. 

         These films would try squeezing their unfunny jokes out of stuff like blustering, idiot officers, stupid missions that collapsed in chaos, and people in uniform falling into mud puddles....

         And did we mention lots and lots of loud overacting from actors you could see dripping with flop sweat as they desperately tried wringing chuckles out of scripts typed out by half asleep hack screenwriters. 

        Sadly, for our towering two lovebirds, "The Horizontal Lieutenant" was more of the same.....

       It's the South Pacific right after the Japanese have surrendered. Second Lieutenant Hutton has been tasked to go a small island to capture the mysterious, unseen Koboyashi, a Japanese soldier who won't give himself up....he much prefers to raid vast amounts of Navy provisions like cans of corn and Gefilte Fish. 

          To Hutton's misery, his mission interrupts his dedicated romancing of a Navy nurse (Prentiss) who every so often gives him an ounce of encouragement....(or at least as much as you can get away with in a 1962 studio comedy.)

          On the sidelines, character actors Charles McGraw, Jim Backus, Jack Carter and Marty Ingels fulfill the usual roles of Various Dumb Bumbling Military Guys. 

           It's frustrating to watch Hutton and Prentiss, who are perfection together, try to rom-com their way into our hearts without any comedic material at all. (We especially loved the way Prentiss would suddenly drop her voice into a lower register as a sort of droll special effect). 

         For the film's two stars, we'll graciously give out 2 stars (**). Without their entertaining presence, we never would've wasted our time with this film at all.