Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Peter Swanson After the first 20 minutes of this film I was wondering why TCM only rated it 2 1/2 stars; after seeing the whole thing I want to know how it got more than 1 1/2. The early part of the film is as-advertised, the story of a Captain and crew trying to get a well-worn destroyer ready to serve in WWII. About 40 minutes into the film the crew picks up a drifting lifeboat, which turns out to contain 2 sailors, 2 pregnant woman, and 20 infants. The story degenerates rapidly into 1940s claptrap, with overlarge doses of idiotic humor, sentiment, and just plain wrong use of Naval terminology and procedures. The most prominent example: when a raft tied to the deck goes adrift in a storm, the Executive Officer -- second in command of the ship -- and the senior Chief are assigned to tie it down. That task would go to the LEAST senior people on board, not the most senior. The last chapter of the story, wherein an ancient tin can out-maneuvers and destroys a Japanese battleship, is unbelievable, but at least contains interesting action. I'm afraid that Stand By For Action was a real waste of a very talented cast.

edwagreen What saves this routine film is the sharp sudden comic turn when the babies show up. It is at this point when Charles Laughton shows his mettle. From the beginning of the film, I thought that Laughton had been terribly miscast.While Brian Donlevy is in solid form, kudos must go to Robert Taylor, especially when he is confronted with the infants on board.Until the arrival of the babies, the film was quite dull at best. Walter Brennan plays his usual role as a dedicated enlisted man. Amazingly, he recovered real fast to sink that Japanese ship.What weakens this film is that there is no really romantic interests in it. Yes, we could have had it despite the misery that World War 11 brought as well as the human sacrifices that had to be endured.

DesScorp Standby for Action starts off as a conventional war movie, and a good one at that. The tone is mostly serious, and the story very interesting. However, transporting (and delivering) babies on a destroyer... during combat with a Japanese battleship, mind you... jumps the shark, so to speak. The serious war movie becomes a screwball comedy, and then a serious war movie again.Had they stuck to the story of the grizzled, former enlisted commanding officer, and a young, brash, never-had-responsibility Harvard first officer, it might have been a GREAT war movie. It certainly had all the elements, including special effects that were good enough to impress even today, especially the scenes where the Japanese pilots spot the convoy.Even so, it's definitely worth watching, despite the great flaw of what feels like two distinct scripts being merged by fiat, and not very well.

SipteaHighTea I love Charles Laughton as Admiral Thomas in this movie. He pulls no punches when it comes to throwing barbs at his former aide and then to his own personal military doctor when it comes to dealing with childbirth. I wonder how did the American military let Laughton wear a Medal of Honor on his uniform? Back in those days, it was taboo to wear a medal like that let alone a ribbon.The only thing I didn't like was about the commanding officer of the Warren coming up from the ranks because I wondered how many enlisted men between the First and Second World Wars actually made officer rank? America's officer corp was pretty much like the German Junker military officer corp and British officer corp where the upper middle class, rich class, and aristocracy class dominated the officer corp, and they were very conservative. The National Guard was like a social club for America's upper crust from the books that I had read. Otherwise, I would have given the movie a perfect 10.All in all, it was a very enjoyable movie. I wish it was on DVD.