Invasion Farce

"The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming." In an isolated old house on Gloucester Island, somewhere off the New England coast, an ordinary American comedy writer (Carl Reiner) is breakfasting with his wife (Eva Marie Saint), ignoring his young son, and dreaming of his return to ulcerization. Vacation is about over, but the excitement has just begun, for some dark and menacing creatures have emerged from the surf. Even as Reiner bolts his toast, one is wheezing, squeaking and sniffling around in the garage outside.

Fortunately the thing cannot be a blob of irritable radioactive ooze, for a moment later it knocks at the door and announces, with a hammer-and-sickly grin: "We're Norwheeguns." Actually the nervous Norsemen are petrified Soviet sailors whose sub has run aground on a sand bar. Their spokesman is Alan Arkin, a cabaret satirist (Second City) and Broadway clown (Luv), making a major movie debut that probably deserves an Oscar, a Lenin Peace Prize, and any other encouragements a wicked old world can offer.

With rib-cracking insight, Arkin plays Rozanov, leader of the scouting party that slips ashore to commandeer a launch and stays to persuade the island's crotchety nor'easterners that a full-scale invasion has begun. Taking over a tailor shop, subduing a telephone operator (Tessie O'Shea), Arkin's response to crisis is a cunning blend of caution, mad sweetness and reluctant acts of aggression, all booby-trapped with nuance about the love-hate relationship between East and West. Though many of his lines are in Russian (hastily acquired for this role), his Red-roving English is a comic wonder, spoken with the don't-look-back resolve of a man headed over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

If all of Russians Are Coming were as good as its best actor, the laughter might reach gale force. Sad to say, Director Norman Jewison and Scenarist William Rose, working from a novel by Nathaniel Benchley, seem too anxious, or too unsubtle, to sound the depths of a delightfully quirky human comedy. Instead they try too often for ding-dong farce, calling on a corps of hard-sell comedians to transform the townfolk into strident cartoons. Jonathan Winters as an addled police officer, Ben Blue as an irrelevant drunk, and Paul Ford as a sword-swinging Legionnaire are the chief offenders, since their familiar broad comedy bits beget feeble satire of Birchite fear and hysteria. This seasonable breach of security is well worth the risks, though, and an obligatory nod to young love turns out surprisingly well, mostly because John Phillip Law, as a tense Russian sailor, and blonde Movie Newcomer Andrea Dromm, as an amiable babysitter, make coexistence look like their own idea.

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