THE D.I.
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
(1957) * (out of four)
My inner flag was at half-mast last year when Nick at Nite pulled "Dragnet" reruns off the air. Sure, I'd seen them all at least once, but I could always count on at least a few inadvertent laughs from ultra-serious Jack Webb when there was nothing else on TV. Even though "Dragnet" is out of circulation at the moment, we Webb anti-fans still have THE D.I., a 50's propaganda piece for the military that is almost as hilarious as the famous "Blue Boy" episode of "Dragnet."
For anyone like me who got laughs out of Webb's rapid-fire speeches and straight-faced seriousness, think of THE D.I. as what would happen if Sgt. Joe Friday ever enlisted, because he plays exactly the same character here, a no-nonsense old fart who looks with disdain at the younger generation and loves to give long- winded, melodramatic speeches on any topic. In this election year, I'm more convinced than ever that Webb and Bob Dole were separated at birth.
The movie opens in characteristic fashion as one recruit after another knocks on Webb's office door and enters. He gives each one a different series of cranky criticisms before the credits come up. The "Produced and Directed by Jack Webb" card pretty much goes without saying. This is his movie all the way, and after the first twenty minutes of him chewing out his recruits for no reason, I was wondering if there would even be a plot. I certainly would have been entertained by an hour and a half of trademark Webb rants, but THE D.I. gives us more -- much more.
Webb's mission is to make a man out of Private Owens, the local screw-up. The Captain gives Webb three days to convert Owens into Marine material or, the captain will "personally cut the lace off his panties and ship him out myself." (Whether the "lace panties" part refers to Webb or Owens remains unanswered.) This, of course, gives Webb an excuse to focus all his crotchety energy on making Owens' life a living hell.
For those of you who haven't been indoctrinated into the pleasures of Webb watching, here's a reprint of a typical monologue of his. I can't duplicate his hilarious delivery on paper, but the words should at least partially convey what I'm talking about... "Now you listen to me, youngster. Someday you'll wake up fighting on a beach and you'll pray to God somebody doesn't get killed because of your foolishness... I've got a headline for you: Every time you make one of those little mistakes of yours, you're gonna turn around and I'll be standing right there."
I couldn't write down all the reprintable dialogue from THE D.I. (nearly all of it belongs in the Bad Movie Hall of Fame), but I tried to include some of the more noteworthy lines, like one from the scene where Webb unwinds from a hard day's work by going to the local bar (where he orders a tomato juice). He meets a woman who, coincidentally, also orders tomato juice but walks away from a typically-stimulating conversation with Webb to flirt with his arch-rival, another Marine D.I. Webb marches over to the table, gets up in her face and says, "Just what kind of a dame do you think you are?" Bogart he ain't.
The other D.I. gets one of the few memorable non-Webb lines when he confesses to the girl, "He's a damn good D.I. ... I guess I'm just a little jealous." Join the club, we're all jealous of Jack Webb's way with women, which is showcased even more amusingly in a later scene, as Webb finds his way to the woman's place of employment, a lingerie store, and stands around looking incredibly flustered at the negligees on display. "You expect me to talk to you... in _here_?!" he exclaims, no doubt intimidated by the barrage of bras.
The woman goes off to help a customer, leaving Webb to fend for himself once again in this palace of estrogen. A little girl spots him in the store and demands, "What are you doing in here... you're a man, aren't you?" He doesn't reply, but you know he's thinking in his head, "What an odd species of human -- so small. Must be one of those children everyone's been talking about." This poor girl, scarred for life by her early encounter with Jack Webb, would later swear off the male gender entirely, just one of the many lesbian conversions he's responsible for.
The movie doesn't focus too closely on Webb's romance, it also continues the Owens subplot with probably the most memorable scene in the entire movie, where Webb forces his platoon to spend the entire night searching the ground for a flea Owens killed during one of their drills. After two privates hatch a scheme to present Webb with the wrong dead flea, Webb asks Owens, "Was that flea you killed a male or female?" Owens replies, "A male, sir." Webb yells to the platoon, "This ain't the one!" That such a scene (along with the rest of the movie) was intended to be taken seriously defies comment.
But we know it was all presented with the utmost seriousness when a title card at the end thanks the Marines not only for their cooperation in the making of THE D.I., but for Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal and every other major battle of the first half of the 20th century. Webb held the military in such high esteem that all the soldiers in the movie (with the exception of Owens) were played by actual Marines. Someone wanting to parody this movie couldn't do a more comical job than Webb did.
It makes it all the more ironic (like raeeyain on your wedding day) that the man had no sense of humor himself. There's a scene in the movie where the guys are on their break time discussing something and one of them breaks into laughter. Webb bursts in the room and shouts, "What did I tell you about laughing?!" to which the private replies, "Sir, only nine-year-old girls laugh, sir!" And let me tell you, I was as happy as a nine-year- old girl while watching this movie.
--
Visit the Movie Critic at LARGE homepage at http://www.missouri.edu/~c667778/movies.html Serving America For Over 1/50 of a Century!
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews