All Wrong

In a ramshackle barracks that reeks of boot-blacking and boiled cabbage, Private Wright—an antipodean beanpole with a face like a squeezed concertina—marches to the beat of a drum only he can hear. Every salute snaps the wrong way, every rifle drill threads bullets through the laundress’s bloomers, and when the colonel demands a ceremonial goose-step the lad’s knees revolt in opposite directions. The plot pirouettes from bungled trench simulation to a midnight escapade where Wright, clad in a general’s borrowed plumes, accidentally requisitions a circus elephant instead of a cavalry horse. Court-martial looms like a guillotine, yet our dim-sighted hero mistakes the tribunal for a vaudeville audition and breaks into a soft-shoe shuffle atop the war-office table. Cannon fire becomes slapstick percussion, salutes morph into pratfall choreography, and the finale—a frontline skirmish turned three-ring circus—sees Wright’s hapless salute launch a barrage balloon that drifts behind enemy lines bearing only a pair of polka-dot boxers and a lipstick-smeared kiss. Order is miraculously restored when the enemy, convulsed with laughter, surrenders their trench in exchange for the clown’s recipe for plum duff.