Its graphic example of recycling warfare waste is probably the only saving grace of this bad and moronic American service comedy, which should be called instead "Testosterone Nightmare". Under the command of a beer-drinking, cigar-smoking and sexist captain (Ernie Kovacs) who throws empty cans into the air and wants a submissive and dependent woman, the plot concerns macho US Air Force men wasting the moneys of tax-payers, while they do nothing in a hard to find base in a remote Japanese little island called Shima, where local persons despise them. In comes a private (Dick Shawn) who happens to have two serial numbers (a fact that turns out to be the author's key artifice in the idiotic resolution) and who out of boredom proposes to everybody in the base to build a hotel in the island
just to do something. They use all the wood, iron, tin or plastic of weaponry that American armed forces left around Japan, incorporate the community hiring local fishermen, maids and workers, and they successfully open the place recurring to false advertising (the promise of curative water in the premises, that also increases male potency). A scientific writer (Robert Emhardt in an embarrassing role) discovers the fraud and of course there is a shallow-brained trial that ends concealing corruption in all levels, or perhaps
giving voice to a collective guilty conscience for all the cultural, physical and psychological health damage the United States brought to Japan and its people to end World War II in Asia with "nuclear wizardry", and thereafter. To top the whole mess, beautiful Nobu McCarthy is wasted, used as decor, playing the educated daughter of the mayor of Shima who is unable to explain anything to inane officials who think she is a slave of Shawn, who the maids call papa-san. One may say, "Hey, it's a comedy". Yes, but what an uninspired comedy. No wonder I had completely forgotten it, since I saw it when I was a kid.
Review of Wake Me When It's Over
