Another one of those movies that I saw ages ago, before I even started this blog, and never got around to watching another time is Private Benjamin. So, when it showed up on TCM last year on Veteran's Day, I recorded it so I could watch it and finally do a post on it here.
Goldie Hawn plays Judy Benjamin, a Jewish woman from an upper-class Philadelphia family who's about to get married to Yale Goodman (Albert Brooks). Judy has lived a life of leisure and, marrying a rich lawyer-type, she's going to be able to continue that by being the rich wife instead of having to go out into the professional world. The wedding goes off without a hitch but, as Yale is consummating the marriage later that evening, he suddenly drops dead of a heart attack, literally right on top of poor Judy.
As you might guess, Judy is disconsolate, with nobody being able to cheer her up, which frankly is perfectly normal considering her husband not only died on their wedding night, but died under rather morbid circumstances. So she calls up one of those late-night radio shows to pour her heart out, which brings her into contact with an army officer who also calls in, Sgt. Ballard (Harry Dean Stanton in a small role). Ballard pretty much lies to her about what life in the army is like and, being armed with all these lies, Judy decides she's going to enlist as a wy to try to turn her life around.
Judy gets sent to basic training in the Deep South with a bunch of other stock character types you've seen in pretty much every other service comedy, and it's here that Judy realizes she's been fed a bunch of lies, with her superior officers, Capt. Lews (Eileen Brennan) and drill sergeant Ross (Hal Williams) belittling her for her naïveté. Pvt. Benjamin decides she's going to stick it out and not give her superiors the satisfaction of her quitting, while she also makes friends with her fellow recruits. They dumb luck their way into winning war games and, on a weekend furlough to New Orlenas, Benjamin meets a French doctor, Tremont (Armand Assante) who tells her to look him up if she's ever in Europe.
Fat chance of her getting to Europe. Except that she's given the chance to try out for the paratroopers, where her new CO, Col. Thornbush (Robert Webber) goes too far in trying to encourage her to overcome her fear of jumping out of a plane. Rather than create controversy, it's decided among everybody to get Pvt. Benjamin as far away from Thornbush as possible, which means transferring Benjamin... to NATO headquarters in Brussels, where Capt. Lewis just happened to get transferred herself a few months earlier.
At this point, the movie takes a decidedly uneven turn, as it becomes less about Pvt. Benjamin's adventures in the army and more about her relationship with Tremont, a subplot which doesn't always work. Tremont keeps giving Benjamin reasons to believe that he might not be faithful to her or that there are other bits of his past that he's hiding. What future with Pvt. Benjamin choose for herself?
Goldie Hawn received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Private Benjamin, although I have to say that after watching three of the other four nominees (I still haven't seen Ellen Burstyn in Resurrection) that the other nominees were phenomenal while Hawn was "only" very good. Hawn is quite good when the movie requires her to be comic, but the script somewhat lets her down when it moves to the romance portion in Paris. Eileen Brennan also got an Oscar nomination and she's really good, although I can't judge her against the other nominees since I haven't seen all of them. Of course, Brennan isn't really in the romantic part of the script.
Private Benjamin is mostly a good movie, but it is somewhat uneven due to the two plots. Still, it's decidedly worth watching.
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