6/10
Shore puts on a fair performance, but very inferior to "Bio-Dome"
31 December 2010
In the Army Now reminds me a little of the Corey Haim/Corey Feldman film Last Resort. Both came out in the year 1994, and both have potential to be very enjoyable works of farce, they fail in taking themselves seriously. In In the Army Now and Last Resort the films have a few parts that are really funny, but then they are followed by dull and laughless jokes that don't go anywhere and make you want the film over as soon as possible. What a perfectly good waste of Shore and Dick's talent.

My favorite work of Pauly Shore was in the 1996 film Bio-Dome. I don't think we'll ever get something as good as Pauly Shore's work in that film. The first half of In the Army Now is very entertaining, but the funniest stuff is in the electronic store where Shore and Dick work in the beginning. If that was made into a film it would be a Clerks style film which would be very impressive. Instead the film thinks it will be funny to ship them off, well, in the army. Now.

The plot revolves around Bones Conway (Shore) and Jack Kaufman (Dick) who, after a matter of minutes, are fired from their job at an electronic store for wrecking a stack of TV sets. In an effort for quick money, Bones and Kaufman join The United States Army Reserves.

The boys sign up for water purification as their field, and after passing the training, they meet a tomboyish woman named Christine Jones (Pretty) and a dentist named Fred Ostroff (Grier). The four nickname their group "the waterboys". What they do not realize is that Libya is attacking Chad, and Bones and Jack get called into duty. They now must survive out in the army, with their new group.

I caught this on TV and thought "this may be good for a farce laugh." While I did laugh a few times, the jokes weren't original or clever for that matter. I still have three Pauly Shore films I need to watch (Encino Man, Adopted, and Jury Duty), and I hope at least one is better or surpasses Bio-Dome There has to be one.

Andy Dick managed to squeeze some awkward, yet appropriate laughs out of this film which is surprising. I never really found Andy Dick too amusing, but this film taught me he isn't all bad. Thats pretty much all I learned from In the Army Now. That may be an accomplishment. I don't think anyone else learns a damn thing from a slapstick fest.

Starring: Pauly Shore, Andy Dick, Lori Petty, David Alan Grier, and Brendan Fraser. Directed by: Daniel Petrie, Jr.
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