"It's going to be a long war."

Rating: 4/10 (18 September 2019)

I'm not a big fan of low brow, frat boy humor, and that's about the only appeal this picture has. Nor am I usually critical of perceived racist behavior in a film if it's done within the context of the times in which the story took place, but the blatant expressions of racism in this picture was a bit too much. Painting a white stripe on Pvt.Ogden Johnson Jones (Frank McRae) was probably the most egregious example, but there were others leveled at the Germans and the Japanese as well. Okay, they were the enemy in World War II, but the attempt at humor felt more like a way to denigrate. John Belushi was fully hitting his stride in the late Seventies as a comic actor, so it's a shame he wound up in a clunker like this. Brilliant as he was as a 'Saturday Night Live' cast member, he never really achieved his potential in film before succumbing to his addictions. As Wild Bill Kelso here, he gets limited screen time in bits that are more raucous than funny; pairing him in some way with Dan Aykroyd might have served the story line better. But the story line, if there is one, is all over the place while loosely exploring what might have happened if the Japanese followed up Pearl Harbor with an attack on mainland California. With the right screenplay, that might have been interesting, but this didn't have the right screenplay. Or much else.