I turned on this comedy, not expecting much. It looked like the sort of meaningless unfunny 'family' comedies that Disney specialized in during the late 1960s. But the sure comic timing of Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett won me over immediately: and the absurdity of the situation -- two sailors on a submarine in the middle of the desert, told off to deliver a talking duck is carried through surefootedly. True, it is cheaply shot and timed to look more like one of those fantasy-comedies that populated TV during the 1960s -- Mr. Ed, I Dream of Jeannie, The Munsters -- but there is something about its attitude towards the government, with its idiotic bureaucratic navy that speaks to 1960s dissatisfaction and rebellion than all of Jack Nicholson's performances.
It's not a great movie by any means, but a very amusing time-waster, with some great parts for old timers like former child actor Jackie Cooper and ex-Charlie Chan Roland Winter.
