Military Intelligence and You! (2008)

2 Stars (out of 4)

Training in Vain

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Writer/director Dale Kutzera attempts a spoof of a WWII-era army training film with this collection of old movie footage, new, black-and-white footage and authoritative, comic narration. The new segments are set in a secure headquarters somewhere, the characters barking orders while the "action" is relegated to long gone movie actors like William Holden, Elisha Cook Jr. and Ronald Reagan. The new characters, heroic Major Nick Reed (Patrick Muldoon) and pretty Lieutenant Monica Tasty (Elizabeth Bennett), moon over one another for a supposed romantic subplot. (It's designed less like a training film than a Hollywood fiction, with a traditional three-act structure.) Every so often the narrator wryly makes implications to our current military conflict. But even at a brief 78 minutes, the jokes are too few, too repetitive and too obvious to really make this worthwhile.