Ensign Pulver (1964)

Fresh and Exciting

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Not everything in the film version of "Mr. Roberts" avoided the redolence of the mid-1950s--particularly the cornball aspects of a lot of "service comedy" then. Still."Mister Roberts" was made when World War II was not a distant memory, and some fidelity to that remembered collective experience is respected even in the vein of comedy. "Ensign Pulver" is perhaps not much more broad, but it is much more crude and is no longer interested in capturing the sensibility of the period in which it is set. Instead it panders to the period in which it was made, as if to say the gold standard of comedy then was found on TV in "Get Smart" and "Batman." In short, its sensibility was what was then called Camp. This is understandable except for the fact that the director and collaborator on the original material, Joshua Logan, directed "Ensign Pulver" and should have had a stake in staying true to the impulses behind the creation of this story and these characters. After all, Henry Fonda, having spent years as Mr. Roberts onstage, fought his old pal John Ford (and got a punch in the mouth for it) during the early filming of "Mister Roberts" in order to uphold the integrity of Logan's vision. But Logan himself in "Ensign Pulver" seems to have thrown that integrity overboard with the blessed palm tree.

Perhaps if this film had no connection at all to the superb Mister Roberts, it might rate three stars for being simply a terrible comedy misfire of stunning proportions. That could be forgiven, dismissed, and easily overlooked. However, this film exists only as a cynical effort to cash-in on the success of a treasured creative triumph which had been emotionally embraced by audiences worldwide. There is but one redeeming factor in this entire abomination of a sequel and that is the presence of Walter Matthau. He comes off well although the lifeless mess of a script gives him little to work with. The rest of the ensemble is a conglomeration of miscasting (the usually excellent Ives), actors lacking any talent whatsoever (Tommy Sands?!), and the completely charmless, irritating, and horrendously awful Robert Walker, Jr. He alone is enough to sink this stinking scow and was better suited to portraying psychopaths on TV when some delusional casting director actually believed Walker, Jr. would be just right for some doomed police procedural. While it is somewhat interesting to see young future stars at the start of their careers, the performances are really pretty bad and all of these now well-known actors were fortunate to have survived this wreck, let alone going on to win multiple awards, appearing in some of the most successful television programs/films ever produced, and earning many millions in cash. Besides a soulless script, Ensign Pulver was personally assassinated by director Josh Logan, acting without mercy and with a vicious abandon that is painful to witness. Even a gentle soul like Mr. Roberts himself might well have taken some drastic action if he had seen the ruthless damage inflicted upon this rusting tub of unpleasantness and would have desperately deflected Logan's grim pattern of relentless torpedoes. Alas, those who saw the original Mr. Roberts will most likely find this ghastly garbage barge a heartbreaking insult to the source material if not an outright greedy criminal assault upon a beloved classic.

Minus Mister Roberts the rest of the characters from that classic play have returned to this sequel that presents Ensign Pulver as the leading character. This film makes the assumption that you have seen Mister Roberts so you know who the main characters are and their personalities before you even watch Ensign Pulver.Playing the roles of Ensign Pulver, Captain Morton, and Doc are Robert Walker, Jr., Burl Ives, and Walter Matthau. Walker is far more a callow youth than Jack Lemmon was in Mister Roberts. After that show of bravado where Pulver through the Captain's prize palm tree overboard, it's once again business as usual with the tyrannical captain going out of his way to be the meanest man on earth running this navy cargo ship, miles away from the action in the Pacific theater. At first there's a lot more service type comedy than there was in Mister Roberts, but things do take a serious turn when Pulver and the Captain go overboard during a typhoon. Many days on a rubber raft and then on a tropic island make the captain open up and you get some insight why he's the nasty fellow he is.Some other key roles are Tommy Sands who plays a sailor looking to get leave because his wife just lost their baby and Gerald S. O'Loughlin who gets temporary command of the USS Reluctant when Ives goes missing. In fact Ensign Pulver makes an addition to Mister Roberts in that the ship we see has a full complement of officers other than the four main characters from Mister Roberts. Look for Jack Nicholson in a small role as radioman Dolan and as per the civil rights era, Al Freeman integrates the crew which was not the case in Mister Roberts.Walker gets a love interest in Millie Perkins an army nurse who sees him for the shiftless character he is and her supervisor is Kay Medford who has a very droll part. Ensign Pulver is not a classic like Mister Roberts, but it is an amusing service comedy and holds up well today.

OK, OK ! So I have heard that Ensign Pulver did not match up to Mr. Roberts. Nevertheless, I still found Ensign Pulver to be entertaining as well as funny. Ensign Pulver takes place at the near end of World War II, with a boat crew ready to throw it's captain overboard just to have some "breathing room" & some liberties. Just when the crew is about to blow a gasket, along comes Ensign Pulver with a "spiked" projectile & sling-shot with the captains name on it! As if things couldn't get worse, the captain is washed overboard during a storm....and of all persons, Ensign Pulver goes after him.....& ends up saving the crabby (later on with "frogjuice" very crocked & mellow)captains life. As I said in the beginning, there have been many things said about this movie......that it wasn't worth being a sequel to Mr. Roberts & the mediocre cast. In my opinion (for what it's worth), I found Ensign Pulver to be "more" entertaining & not as serious.....more funny & human. As of this writing, I have yet to see this movie in CinemaScope.....as it was originally released. Also, the cast in Ensign Pulver is much better & funnier. Enjoy!!