Although there's a lot of people who don't like Pauly Shore, apparently you either love him or hate him, I have to say that I found this film quite amusing. It takes me back to my younger days when I was a weekend warrior. The group I hung out with I'm afraid, all people who were trying to get out of the real army and Vietnam joined the reserves as I did. We were about as military a group as Pauly Shore, Andy Dick, and David Alan Grier. Back then though we were not side by side with Lori Petty. The Army in its infinite wisdom knew better than to activate our crowd for Vietnam.But that's not what happens here. Pauly Shore and Andy Dick are a pair of misfits in civilian life and find they have a cash flow problem. That extra money for attending those Army Reserve drills sounds pretty enticing so they decide to be all that they can be on the weekends and two weeks in the summer.But Libya and Chad go to war and like the Iraqi Desert Storm, the reserves are called up for a United Nations multi-national force. Actually Libya and Chad did have border conflicts for many years with the French attacking as protectors for Chad. Pauly, Andy, and their new friends David Alan Grier and Lori Petty are in the Sahara Desert as part of a water purification team, water boys as they're derisively called by those in the real army.In The Army Now revives all the basic service comedy situations going all the way back to Abbott&Costello in Buck Privates. Especially in the training sequences. Pauly Shore and Andy Dick probably grew up on Bud&Lou, but they do the routines with a Generation X twist.I liked the film and thanked God I was not in the situations that Pauly and the rest were in.

It's Pauly Shore. It is what it is. However, i do have one, personally infamous issue with this movie. Oh sure, i can laugh about it now b/c it was so long ago, but at the time, i could have beat Pauly Shore with any number of garden tools. you see... I was going through basic training for the Army at Ft. Sill in 1994 and was "asked" by my drill sergeant's to be one of the unwittingly captive extras out there running in place in the "EXTEND TO THE LEFT---MARCH!!!" scene. That's right, sports fans, i was one of those poor souls kept out of bed until the wee hours of the morning so that Mr. Shore could have his early morning Army PT scene. Only it wasn't early morning. It was filmed in about three takes between the hours of 2000 and 2400. That's 9:00p.m. 'til midnight. For those or us who know, sleep in basic training is a rare and valued commodity and Mr. Shore took about four of the six hours i got away that night. So, needless to say, my fellow recruits and I didn't much care for Mr. Shore, especially at 0300 the next morning when the training day started. we somehow got through it but never really got over it. It wasn't until a few years later that I finally got to watch the movie. That infamous scene comes on and guess what I see. I see my bald-headed self out there running in place clear as day...well, night. It's only for maybe three seconds, but it's long enough to be confirmed by a number of people. So, there it is, three seconds of my fifteen minutes of fame used in a Pauly Shore movie. wow.

What must have started out as a one-liner: "Hey, let's put Pauly Shore in the Army!" -- turned into a full-fledged classic that will be as funny a century from now as it was when it was released. The humor is original, the stereotypes (and knocking them down a peg) are present in abundance, and Art LeFleur as the first Sargent could have squeaked out an Oscar nomination had the film starred anyone else. The dramatic elements are also stronger than generally recognized.The plot: Chad has chemical warheads pointed at US targets, and it's up to Pauly Shore (Bones), Andy Dick, Lori Petty, and the black guy from McHale's Navy to save the world, six weeks after they completed basic training for the Army Reserves. Need I say more? Watch it.

At what point does a film maker start realizing that he or she is working on a really bad movie? Is it somewhere during the first reading of the script, or is it during the long days of the shoot, or maybe during the last desperate hours in the editing room?This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and I don't say that endearingly. Really, really bad movies have the ability to be watched in a bemused fashion where one can sit back and wonder aloud exactly what the film maker was trying to say or do, but this movie doesn't even allow the viewer that luxury. It annoys, aggravates and ultimately beats down its audience with ineptitude. A Paulie Shore classic - that's for sure, or should I say that's for Shore - ha - get it Paulie? Shore instead of sure. Oh you do get it?