The Choirboys (1977)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Absolutely amazing

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Being a lifelong Joseph Wambaugh fan (I have read almost every book he's written), I was anxious to buy a DVD of the ' Choirboys', one of my favorite books ... I have read that Wambaugh hated the movie so much, he sued to have his name removed from it's credits ... I understand perfectly ... This is, without a doubt, the WORST film ever made ... it easily stands up to the very worst of cinema history ... forget 'Attack of the Giant Tomatoes', or 'Plan 9 from Outer Space', etc., they are masterpieces compared to this turd ! ... Total waste of time and money ... a decent cast, wasted on a pathetic mess ... the acting is beyond amateurish ... Randy Quaid, a joke of an actor anyway, portrayed the WORST drunk scene ever attempted ... even the sound is terrible, with many portions sounding like they were dubbed in during a bad hangover ... check out the 'laughing fit' scene of Burt Young's scene, it sounds as though a cackling old bag-lady was hired to do the scene ... btw, Young gave the only a decent performance, evidence of his skill as an actor ... I'm finished, this mess has already gotten more attention than it deserves ...

The Choirboys is flat-out one of my all-time favorite movies!!! I have read the list of reviews here, and the positive ones are more insightful than most of the negative reviews, which consist mainly of "moronic," "insulting," "an outrage," ... blah, blah, blah (or more precisely "wah, wah, wah").Don't listen to them -- this is an EXCELLENT movie. Mind you, it won't win any academy awards, but the cast is a who's who of Hollywood superstars. But, of course, they weren't stars when this movie was made -- they were really just breaking into the business, for the most part. Heck, James Woods alone is worth the price of admission!! And do keep in mind that this movie was made 30 years ago -- the cinematography and over-all feel is kind of dark, although there are some hilarious scenes! And I do not apologize for any part of this movie -- of all "police comedies" it is by far the most "real," in that I can imagine very easily a department EXACTLY like the one depicted. (In fact, I MISS the days when cops were REAL PEOPLE -- and not a bunch of ex-Marine Drill Instructors akin to Robocops (no offense to The Marines -- but you know what I mean, don't you?).Choir Practice, in the movie, is, of course, the weekly drinking fest where the boys (and girls) blow off steam. And typical of 70's movies, there is more than one story going on at the same time -- and a good deal of time is spent developing the array of characters, all with stories of their own.I like this movie -- and if you like Dirty Harry and think he is AWESOME for KICKING ASS, if you think this world has gotten WAY TO PC for comfort, if you like to party and make no excuses for it -- then you will like this movie, too!

Director Robert Aldrich doesn't often deliver a film that falls in the middle ground. Most of the time, Aldrich's name on the film either guarantees a good movie or an absolutely terrible one. The Choirboys is Aldrich at his very worst – if you thought The Grissom Gang and Hustle were bad, you ain't seen nothing yet! It is a tasteless and repetitively episodic story, a complete mess of a film which merely reinforces the very prejudices that it is supposedly criticising. Nothing about the film works, not even slightly. Joseph Wambaugh, who penned the original novel upon which the movie is based, was so appalled at this travesty that he took legal action to have his name removed from the credits! That should tell you all you need to know.A unit of L.A. cops spend their shifts patrolling the city in search of violence and sleaze. When they're on duty they are little better than thugs with a badge, dishing out justice with total disregard for moral standards and public safety. When they're off duty they are even worse, spending their nights getting drunk in a local park and acting like hooligans. Slowly but surely, each character's motivations are revealed. For example, Officer Sam Lyles (Don Stroud) is shown to be an ex-Vietnam vet whose wartime experiences have left him claustrophobic. In one harrowing scene, he flips out whilst drunk in a locked police van and kills a hustler, a shocking act that the higher echelons of the L.A. force are only too keen to cover up. A pair of cops (Randy Quaid, Tim McIntire) are assigned to talk a suicide jumper down from a high-rise building, but their approach is so unsubtle and aggressive that she ends up flinging herself to her death. One cop, the handsome all-American Baxter Slate (Perry King), is found out as a kinky sex addict and disowned by his colleagues, leading to such personal shame that he commits suicide. And so it goes…. the cops continually foul up one job after another with their trigger-happy attitudes, their racist and sexist unprofessionalism, and their reckless disregard for true law and order.There are those who hail The Choirboys as a blackly comic expose of the police profession. But in truth there is nothing funny about this horrible little film. Aldrich virtually hammers us over the head with extreme vulgarity and offensiveness to make his point, and the approach is so heavy-handed and unpleasant that the film becomes a challenge to sit through. The cast of terrific actors are particularly embarrassing in their thankless roles, none more so than Lou Gossett Jr, Charles Durning and Robert Webber (the latter especially degraded by his part as a callous superior officer with an immoral personal agenda). Christopher Knopf's screenplay offers no glimmer of salvation for the gallery of slimeball characters, so that as the film comes to an end after its interminable two hours the viewer is left with a nasty taste in the mouth and an empty feeling in the stomach. Avoid The Choirboys – it's one of the worst of all-time!

I had the misfortune of seeing this "movie" a few nights ago. Now I've seen a lot of films that have been tagged as turkeys in one way or another but despite all the negativity surrounding them they were still watchable in some way.The same cannot be said of "The Choirboys".Because it has no plot its similar to watching a home video of a group of people, none of whom you know or care about, simply goofing around.However here its worse as you have usually super actors such as James Woods making utter idiots of themselves. None of their supposed "comedic" moments are funny but instead leave you with a sense of revulsion.The film fails on so many levels and is quite frankly an abomination.