Most modern viewers won’t know the character of Sgt. Bilko, and frankly, not many did when this movie arrived in cinemas in 1996 leading to a disappointing box office take. Nonetheless, I always had a soft spot in my heart for the character of Bilko and Phil Silvers. Never had a character so fit an actor than Bilko and I grew up with the reruns playing on Sunday mornings…but I never really had the chance to catch them. But I discovered Silvers when he was one of the stars of my favorite comedy films, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
So I wasn’t necessarily fully informed going into the film. It starts energetically and you understand the premise within seconds. Sgt. Bilko runs every scam at Fort Baxter and Steve Martin plays him…pretty much as Steve Martin, not Phil Silvers. That’s probably for the best, but it seems they wrote the character for Martin as well, which makes him a little more crass and has a smoothness that no one ever really bought with Silvers, making him all the more fun to watch.
The character of Bilko started as a sketch on the Ed Sullivan Show until it became the basis of the The Phil Silvers Show. (Amazingly, this show is available NOWHERE for streaming. After a marathon of Car 54, Where Are You? I went searching since a number of the stars of that show started on Silvers, but it just is nowhere to be found.) The fast talking Silvers was always trying to pull one over on his dim witted superior officers with his company of complicit accomplices in the motor pool. This movie extends that, but as I’ll go into near the end of the review, some areas it moves into are not necessarily an improvement on the character. In the TV series, Fort Baxter was set in Kansas, but the movie sets the action in California as evidenced by a trip to Vegas and a reference to “returning a horse to Knotts Berry Farm.” The reference to Knotts Berry Farm is particularly of interest since Martin started his performance career at the Birdcage theater in that amusement park.
Unlike McHale’s Navy, which got a movie during its initial run, Sgt. Bilko had never made it to film before. Bilko was strictly a television creation. In translating the character, they decided on amping up the destruction and stunts Bilko was known for, often to amusing results.
Saturday Night Live alumni litter the film. Dan Akyroyd, Phil Hartman, and Chris Rock all have significant roles. Martin, himself, hosted the program nearly a dozen times himself. Often this comes off as a prolonged SNL skit parodying Bilko with over-amped scenery chewing by every member of the cast. In that regard, the film doesn’t feel like it was made in the 90’s. It feels like a misplaced 60’s romp…which might have made it a lot better since they could have used Phil Silvers himself. (Cathy Silvers, Phil Silver’s real life daughter, played a significant role in this film as well; a nice nod to the source material.)
Daryl “Chill” Mitchell does a nice job playing the morally upright Private Holbrook does his best grounding the film which often seems to veer off into over the top hijinks. He doesn’t exactly pull it off, but the script, the director, and every other actor in the film is working against him. It wasn’t a fair fight.
The weak link, somehow, is probably the strongest performer in the bunch. Hartman is playing his all-too-common villain role where he moves in on the protagonist’s girl. Frankly the only reason we don’t want to see her (played expertly by Glenne Headly) with Hartman is that he is possibly the only character more reprehensible than Martin’s Bilko in the movie. It just doesn’t feel like a good match for the rest of the military humor throughout the film. It’s a distraction that doesn’t pay off really.
The movie has genuine laughs within it, but instead of focusing on those, it gets distracted with this revenge scheme by Hartman. It destroys the best efforts in the other gags throughout the film (like the constant sound effects of cars having trouble starting due to the lack of care Bilko’s motor pool provides the vehicles on base). When the movie works, it works well, but this is no Stripes. It’s not Private Benjamin. It’s not Operation Petticoat.
It’s just Sgt. Bilko, so it all feels like a con. It’s amusing from time to time, but don’t trust this one with your money. This is not a sure thing.