McHale's Navy (1997)

I remember one of my favorite comedy directors said one time that the best way to discredit something was to make fun of it. With that in mind, the 60s and 70s were weird for TV shows. With war always living fresh and freely in one’s mind, I guess the time was ripe to put this idea into effect. Shows like Hogan’s Heroes, M\*A\*S\*H, and McHale’s Navy all came out around these decades and were decently popular to boot. However, one of them fell for what I call “the A-Team Resurrection” in which an old TV show gets a movie decades later with little to no demand and that is what Mchale’s Navy turned into.

Before I go any further, I want to talk about some details between the show and the movie. The show was about Lt. Commander McHale and his crew who were more or less pirates that scammed their neighboring navy base, with the base’s commanding officer, Captain Binghamton, wanting to get the entire crew kicked out of the navy. It’s all just hijinks during the wartime (WWII) but the movie, although comedic, has a different approach. McHale and his crew are more or less taking down a terrorist organization in weird ways, a weird sharp turn from the island and wartime living combined with the scams the crew did in the old show.

Of course, this film has problems even with the sharp turn from the original source. For one thing, the characters feel weird. One character, Lt. Penelope Carpenter, is a weird deviation from her source material from the show. The character in the show is supposed to be a bumbling yesman to Binghamton, but in the movie she is more competent and sees Binghamton for the imcompetent fool he is, again unlike the show. Also, the terrorist plot line is just plain odd when paired with the McHale’s crew, who are still “pirates'’ to people around them. The movie also likes to put weird cartoon stuff in it here and there. My first time watching this film and a cartoon sound effect popped up, I was incredibly surprised as, even though there was some slapstick, nothing was ever overly cartoony about the old show. The movie has this odd rivalry pairing with the main antagonist and McHale, but no such thing even existed when the original show came out. McHale was the (sometimes lazy) leader of a group of swindlers and that’s it.

Now for some solutions to all of the problems I’ve listed, in no particular order. First things first, replace the plot with something more akin to the old show, as in being during WWII. Make it an homage to the original rather than what feels like a nostalgic cash grab. Perhaps McHale and his crew are accidentally roped into a Japanese operation that would destroy their base or neighboring island home. Next I would make the characters closer to their old personalities, without the cartoony additions. I’d just make it comedic through a few instances of slapstick and the characters playing off each other, with McHale and Binghamton having the distrust they originally had be more of an obvious butting of heads. The original terrorist villain would be gone, perhaps replaced with a Japanese naval commander or even a defector to the enemy side to really play into the new setting.

Rest in Peace Ernest Borgnine (The original McHale, among other roles) (1917-2012).