Triumphs of Mediocrity

Many are the triumphs of mediocrity on film, and not the least remarkable type is the brazen throwback, such as An Officer and a Gentleman, a big hit of the summer that continues strong into the fall. As many have noted, this is really one of those Service pictures of the Forties, usually starring Tyrone Power (or the same actor by another name), which chronicled the process whereby the Army (or Navy, Air Corps, Marine Corps, Coast Guard) makes a man of a boy, with side glances at his fellow trainees and with some girl or girls thrown in for romance, and featuring at least one SOB of a hard-as-nails non-com who hammers heroism (or potential heroism, depending on whether it is peace or wartime, and on just where the story ends) into the raw recruit or draftee.

An Officer and a Gentleman, which plays a few contemporary and mostly preposterous variations on this theme, is a moderately effective concoction from a time-tested formula by Douglas Day Stewart, a former naval officer and subsequent TV writer, whose main previous achievement was the even trashier The Blue Lagoon. The new film is similarly tailor-made, but for a slightly older audience, whose sentimental cravings for tear-washed and laughter- dried romance have not been lately catered to. The trick here is to provide the film with enough of a coating of bitter contemporaneity to make the viewer swallow the sugary pill. This is what Stewart and his director, Taylor Hack- ford, have done with distasteful efficacy: underneath the outer harshness and inner sweetness lies a thick core of out- and-out mendacity.

JS

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John Simon

Many are the triumphs of mediocrity on film, and not the least remarkable type is the brazen throwback, such as An Officer and a Gentleman, a big hit of the summer that continues strong into the fall. As many have noted, this is really one of those Service pictures of the Forties, usually starring Tyrone Power (or the same actor by another name), which chronicled the process whereby the Army (or Navy, Air Corps, Marine Corps, Coast Guard) makes a man of a boy, with side glances at his fellow trainees and with some girl or girls thrown in for romance, and featuring at least one SOB of a hard-as-nails non-com who hammers heroism (or potential heroism, depending on whether it is peace or wartime, and on just where the story ends) into the raw recruit or draftee.

An Officer and a Gentleman, which plays a few contemporary and mostly preposterous variations on this theme, is a moderately effective concoction from a time-tested formula by Douglas Day Stewart, a former naval officer and subsequent TV writer, whose main previous achievement was the even trashier The Blue Lagoon. The new film is similarly tailor-made, but for a slightly older audience, whose sentimental cravings for tear-washed and laughter- dried romance have not been lately catered to. The trick here is to provide the film with enough of a coating of bitter contemporaneity to make the viewer swallow the sugary pill. This is what Stewart and his director, Taylor Hack- ford, have done with distasteful efficacy: underneath the outer harshness and inner sweetness lies a thick core of out- and-out mendacity.