Ten-SHUN!

REMEMBER BACK IN junior high school, there was always one kid who used to drive the teacher crazy? That's right, the Class Clown--the kid who could belch all the words to "God Bless America" on a single breath, who could pick it and flick it with one hand, the kid who knew the lines to every Three Stooges movie ever made. And when the teacher would tell him to "quiet down," and accuse him of acting like a two-year-old, he would always come up with something like "I resemble that remark! (nook nook nook)" and the whole class would snicker.

One can picture Bill Murray, back in eighth grade, before his acne cleared up, sitting in the back row in Social Studies, spitting out gags in a rat-a-tat style calculated to send the teacher home in tears. Now Murray is grown up, and now the whole world is his classroom.

It is difficult to say exactly what makes Murray such a funny comedian, and what makes his new movie. Stripes, such an enjoyable film. His acting abilities are limited, to say the least, and his juvenile, sarcastic-wiseguy routine is about all he has to go with. And he goes with it relentlessly--often with little subtlety or variation, but it is perhaps more a strength than a weakness. Bill Murray's humor comes at you with the reliability of a Quarter Pounder with cheese--you know exactly what you're going to get when you order it, and you're usually satisfied when it arrives.

Murray's greatest asset, of course, is that he makes the audience feel like laughing, and that, as any comedian will tell you, is half the ballgame right there. Jack Benny could send his audience into hysterics with one squeaky note on his violin. Johnny Carson can turn a bad joke into a kneeslapper with a single bland stare, and Murray can send up lines so well by just standing there with that bemused, half-dopey smile on his face, that by the time he utters a word, the audience is ready to laugh at whatever he says.

The Stripes screenplay, by Len Blum, Dan Goldberg and Harold Ramis, was tailor-made for Murray, who plays the role of John Winger, a lazy, listless yet lovable failure. After losing his job, his car and his girlfriend in that order. Winger, along with his sidekick Russell Zisky (Ramis), decides to join the Army simply because he is too lazy to do anything else. The problems quickly (and predictably) begin when Winger--an incessant clown--meets up with the brass of the United States Military.

Despite its 1980's setting, its language and occasional nudity, Stripes is, more than anything else, an old-fashioned service comedy in the tradition of Abbott and Costello's Buck Privates (1941) or Andy Griffith's No Time for Sergeants (1958). In fact, Stripes could have been edited down to suit any 1940's or 1950's audiences with very little effort. The two scenes of nudity are utterly superfluous to the plot and were no doubt included simply to garner the R-rating needed to be an "adult comedy," as are Murray's throw-away gag lines about kinky sex.

AND UNLIKE most other recent war comedies, a la M*A*S*H*. Stripes makes little attempt to raise questions about the ethics of war and military service. Racial problems are hinted at but then ignored and quickly forgotten. The question of women in the military is dealt with in similar manner. The writers limply play with that one by making Murray's and Ramis's girlfriends military policewomen, but they might as well be Playboy bunnies in khaki. Hollywood sensibilities prevail.

In fact, the only questions raised concerning the military are the obivous ones: how to deal with the physical exhaustion, how to deal with officers; all of the problems which existed even way back in the forties when soldiers fell just slightly behind doctors and God on the admiration scale.

In the end, then, Stripes plays on the old hybrid theme used in Buck Privates, No Time for Sergeants, and all of the innumerable imitations that followed: Misfit joins Army as last resort, misfit has several run-ins with the tough drill sergeant, misfit winds up proving his heroism and thereby gaining the sergeant's respect.

The movie provides good, escapist wishfulfillment. No matter how much Murray baits the sergeant, disregards authority and breaks the rules, everything comes out all right. There's even a shootout with Russians in Czechoslovakia which pits 40 Americans against 200 Russians in closerange combat with machine-guns, mortars, grenades and cannons--and nobody gets hurt.

FOR MOST OF the film, Murray is on his own as the comedian, with the rest of the cast combining to form a single gargantuan straight man. Veteran character actor Warren Oates grimaces his way through his role as the proverbial ornery sergeant. Ramis, as Murray's friend, manages one or two very funny scenes on his own, but for the most part simply provides a solid wall for Murray to bounce his own goofy lines off of. The only real problems with the film come when the minor characters try to join in the fun by grabbing some laughs of their own. One military policewoman, for example, bumbles a Murrayesque gag line and provides one of the most embarrassingly unfunny moments ever captured on film. But luckily, these moments are few and far between, and Stripes remains basically a one-man show, and a good way to blow off a hot summer night. Now get outta here, ya knuckle heads!