Private Benjamin (1980)

terrible... so disappointed.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Goldie Hawn as Judy Benjamin is your typical Philadelphia Jewish princess with two husbands already, one quickly annulled, one expiring on their honeymoon night. Seeking something to give life meaning again she meets with an army recruiter and finds herself pushing Mississippi away from her numerous times as Private Benjamin.This turns out for Goldie Hawn to be one of her career roles, it even spawned a TV series though Hawn did not do it for the small screen. It also won her a Best Actress Oscar nomination for herself and a Supporting Actress nomination for her screen nemesis Eileen Brennan as her basic training company commander. Private Benjamin also got a nomination for Best Original Screenplay.Some 30 years earlier Rosalind Russell also found a home in the army when she did Never Wave At A WAC. A lot of similarities except that Russell was a good deal older when she decided to enlist. Her film was also more of a recruiting commercial for the Women's Army Corps.Hawn's army in 1980 was a great deal more integrated although we would not see women in combat roles until the Gulf War. Still Hawn goes through some rigorous training.She also has a good military mind, pulling out a war game sequence in a similar manner to The Dirty Dozen. She gets the goods on General Robert Webber so to speak and also has mixed results in the romance department with Armand Assante. As a woman who has now learned to be all she can be, she will not be a trophy wife for an Alpha male Frenchman.Funniest scene for me is Goldie complaining about the latrine facilities and Brennan showing her what she can do about it.45+ years later and Private Benjamin still a very good and very funny film.

THE POST Vietnam War years were a sort of mixed bag of conflicting attitudes, changing social mores and an unsure future. Every one of these elements are reflected in the films of that era and the elements that comprise the uneven mood and mission of PRIVATE BENJAMIN are typical.ALTHOUGH THE CONFLICT in Southeast Asia is not a player in the film, the now (1980) vilified Military is at the center of the story. One could gather that the writer and production team inferred that one's choosing to join or to make a career of the Armed Forces was below the dignity of anyone who wishes to "make anything of himself." PROMOTED AS A COMEDY starring vehicle for Miss Goldie Hawn, the movie proves to be much more complex. We concede that, yes it is a comedy in the Classic, Shakespearean sense and there were many a moment of high readings on the old laugh-meter. But there is always an underlying feeling of tension, uncertainty and indecision.THE PERFORMANCES BY the cast were better than average; with star Goldie Hawn and Eileen Brennan's lively interpretations of the women of the U.S. Army being the most interesting aspect of this uneven and preachy comedy-drama.THE FOLLOWING YEAR (1981) Warner Brothers launched a PRIVATE BENJAMIN TV Series; which ran on CBS. In the series, Eileen Brenan reprised her role from the feature film. She was the only hold over./

In "Private Benjamin" Goldie Hawn demonstrates what made her a star: blond hair, child's eyes, and an astounding ability to laugh at herself. Here she sends herself up as both a dumb blond AND a Jewish princess, and the formula would serve as the prototype for every film she made afterward. If this is Goldie at her best, why isn't the film considered a classic? You ask a good question, friend...The first hour of the movie is delightful. Fish-out-of-water Judy Benjamin joins the Army. Judy aggravates the tough-as-nails drill instructor (Eileen Brennan), develops as a soldier and a person, triumphs at war games and inevitably dances to Sister Sledge's "We Are Family" with her fellow cadets in the ultimate display of female bonding. (Sync cycles, anyone?) Hmmmm... that's odd. The movie's over. But according to the box there's still an hour left. What could possibly come next? A bizarre adventure in which Officer Judy gets stationed overseas, falls in love with a Frenchman, and has to decide whether to marry him or re-enlist in the army. I found my mind wandering during the second-half... I started making mental grocery lists, naming state capitals... it was very difficult to stay focused on a movie that had so clearly lost its focus. The scattershot second-half of the movie only serves to undo the good of the first half. Maybe this is why the movie fails to endure as a classic.Still, there's a lot of laughs here, with Goldie Hawn at her best.GRADE: B-

'Private Benjamin' is probably Goldie Hawn's best movie, or at least most well known. Her role as a rich bitch in a fish out of water tale is one she has milked over the years, but here it was quite original and she is at her least annoying, The script by Meyers,Shyer and Miller is one they could do in their sleep and is quite Funny even if it does get incredibly mushy and slushy as the Movie goes on as her character falls for French smoothie Armand Assante. This was a big hit in it's day and deservedly so, but this story has been done to death in the years since and is quite similar to Bill Murray's Movie Stripes which came out barely a year later.Premiere Magazine voted this one of the 50 greatest comedies of all time, while I wouldn't go that far as it's not much better or worse than most of her repertoire.*** out of *****