“Sgt. Bilko is a great, non-stop comedy. It doesn’t get boring. Steve Martin brilliantly plays Sgt. Bilko, a commander of a barrack that has gambling, drinking and sex (not shown—oh well). The flaky soldiers in his barracks wake up at ten when everyone else on base gets up with the military horn at o’ 500 (that’s 5 a.m. for the military-impaired).
The plot is pretty basic. Bilko’s barracks are always trashed and obviously in violation of military law. An old military man (Phil Hartman), who hates Bilko, is back on base to bust him. Like I said, nothing special. Just a basic plot.
What made “Bilko” such a magical movie was all the funky characters. There are all the drunken wackos in Bilko’s barracks, the one new guy who’s serious as ever to be a military man and always asks “permission to speak, sir?” There’s the general of the fort who is scared that the base will be shut down and the man out to get Bilko for what he did years ago. Throw the sloppy, non-working Bilko into the stew and you have a crazy mess of comedy spewing this way and that.
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