Stripes

Recently I noticed that one of Pluto's movie channels had another of those early 80s comedies that I was too young to see on original release and never got around to seeing: Stripes. Since Pluto has the benefit of being able to re-start a program currently running from the beginning, I decided to watch it. Surprisingly, it doesn't seem to be available on demand on Pluto, but there are other services where you can stream or rent it.

Bill Murray plays John Winger, who's in a dead-end job as a cab driver. It doesn't really pay the rent, it doesn't keep his girlfriend happy, it isn't fulfilling, and he has to deal with a lot of passengers who make life difficult for him. John has a best friend in Russell Ziskey (Harold Ramis) who works a job that is theoretically more fulfilling, as a teacher of English as a second language to immigrants. However, the immigrants in his class also make his life difficult. So over pizza one night, Winger gets a brilliant idea: why don't the two of them drop everything and enlist in the army? It's a chance to see the world and make a better life for themselves.

Yeah, right. At least this was at the height of the Cold War, not nowadays with all of the political nonsense, although at least there's no longer the chance of being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. They get assigned to a stereotypically tough drill sergeant in Hulka (Warren Oates, again doing comedy), who finds that he has problems with Winger because of Winger's less than dedicated attitude to the army. Winger and Ziskey also discover that they're not the only ones trying to escape personal problems, as there's Ox (John Candy), who in the real world would probably have failed his army physical, although here's portrayed as wanting to get into shape to be better accepted by women.

Winger, Ziskey, and the rest of the platoon have the sort of shenanigans you'd expect out of basic training in any service comedy, with love interests thrown in too for good measure. One of the scenes has Hulka's commanding officer, Capt. Stillman (John Larroquette) screw up and order the men to do something that winds up getting Hulka injured. Somehow, the platoon is able to finish basic anyway, and this impresses the general, who sends them on a mission to Europe to guard the prototype of a new assault vehicle.

Needless to say, the platoon makes a mess of things because Winger and Ziskey abscond with the vehicle to visit their girlfriends, now stationed at a base in West Germany. They wind up driving into communist Czechoslovakia by accident, and have to get out.

Stripes was a commercial success when it was released, and it's easy to see why. Although in many ways there's nothing really new here compared to the decades of previous service comedies, the material is universal enough and there's enough different stuff to make something that seems fresh if done well. Unsurprisingly, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis were experts at this sort of comedy, along with the supporting cast, making Stripes a very fun ride to take with them.