Barnes & Noble

This tuneful, decade-hopping extravaganza, glowing with patriotic sentiment, is remarkably similar to Hollywood musicals made during the wartime years in which it's mostly set. Bette Midler, playing a brassy USO singer entertaining the troops, seems eerily like a reincarnation of Ethel Merman. James Caan, not quite as felicitously cast, is convincing enough as her partner, a sexist, self-absorbed comic whose onstage banter barely masks his annoyance at having to share the spotlight. Indisputably successful as a team, Midler and Caan keep the act going for years, providing songs, dances, and laughs to American soldiers for the duration of three wars -- even when their offstage relationship suffers. Director Mark Rydell (On Golden Pond) obviously realizes how much For the Boys resembles the old 20th Century Fox musicals that teamed Alice Faye with John Payne or Betty Grable with Dan Dailey, and he isn't afraid to make it just as schmaltzy. Midler and Caan's offstage travails might strike older audiences as strangely familiar, but Midler's warbling of well-remembered standards will find favor among all viewers. Like its 1940s progenitors, For the Boys is slick, formulaic, and robustly entertaining. Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

Bette Midler stars as a Martha Raye-type entertainer during the World War II era in this big-budget nostalgia piece. Midler plays big-band singer Dixie Leonard, who is chosen to perform at an overseas USO Christmas show by her uncle Art Silver (George Segal), a comedy writer for famed comedian Eddie Sparks (James Caan). Dixie is shuttled to London, where she is thrown on-stage with Eddie, who takes an immediate dislike to her. But her performance is a sensation, and the audience can't stop howling at Dixie's smart one-liner comebacks to Eddie. Dixie is catapulted to stardom, and the repartee between Eddie and Dixie becomes the stuff of legend. The two spar together through World War II, the McCarthy era, and Vietnam. But Dixie stops speaking to Eddie when he fires a writer for being a communist sympathizer and, later, she doesn't speak to him again after he arranges for a reunion between her and her son on the battlefields of Vietnam. Finally, Dixie, now an old woman, is cajoled to appear on a television awards show to reunite with a now decrepit Eddie, age 91. Paul Brenner

Product Details

• UPC: 024543013778
• Source: 20TH CENTURY FOX
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Theatre Wide-Screen (1.85.1)
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: stereo
• Language: English, Français
• Subtitles: English, Español
• Time: 2:26:00
• Sales Rank: 16,084

Features:

DVD MENU