Directed by: Howard Zieff
Starring: Goldie Hawn, Eileen Brennan, Robert Webber, Albert Brooks, Sam Wanamaker, Armand Assante, Barbara Barrie, Craig T. Nelson
Private Benjamin begins with such promise but trips on its way to the finish line. It has a nice setup and a woman we care about, but then comes the ungainly mix of fish-out-of-water and basic training pratfalls. By the time Benjamin goes to Europe, I no longer cared, even though she has matured and become more independent.
The film stars Goldie Hawn as Judy Benjamin, a late 20ish woman whose goal in life is to marry a wealthy man and live life maxing out credit cards and decorating her husband's study. She marries a hard-working man named Yale (Brooks) who dies while making love on their wedding night. Her dreams have been shattered and she retreats into seclusion. Desperate for answers on how to right the ship and move on, she goes on a local radio talk show and a caller offers to better her life. She meets him the following day. He is an Army recruiter who makes serving sound like an extended vacation or a job she can quit just like any other if she doesn't like it. He conveniently leaves out the basic training part, which is sure to clash with Judy's ideas of a paid vacation.
She goes to training in Biloxi, Mississippi (I thought immediately of Biloxi Blues) and is taken aback by a drill sergeant who demands she do 10 pushups because she fell asleep on the bus. Judy has little idea how an army barracks works. She frets that there are no curtains and the place is filthy. Her new commanding officer Lewis (Brennan) has a handy solution to that problem and soon enough, Judy is cleaning the latrine with her electric toothbrush. At first, Judy does everything wrong. She can't keep up on the runs and is picked on by another tough female private whom she will ultimately befriend.
A turning point comes when her parents come to the base and want to take her back to live with them, which is not a tantalizing prospect, especially when her overbearing father says, "We will not let you out of our sight." She decides to stay at the base and put her all into training, allowing her to be good at something for the first time in her life. Up to this point, Private Benjamin was predictable, but Hawn allows us to care for her. She is sheltered and privileged, but learns to be independent during her stay in the Army. The basic training stuff is mildly amusing at best, but then things take a wrong turn when she actually becomes useful.
Judy is recruited to be part of the base commander's elite paratrooper unit shortly after she helps (albeit accidentally) her team win the base's war games. His ideas for her don't necessarily involve jumping out of a plane at 13,000 feet. Before that, she bonds with her fellow teammates around a campfire while passing around a joint. This has become a cliche in itself. Is the only way to bond involve smoking weed and laughing hysterically at everything? This is likely the early 80's version of female bonding. A similar scene is featured in 9 to 5.
Judy hooks up with a handsome French doctor (Assante) while on leave and blackmails her base commander into stationing her in France near him. He seems nice at first, but prefers soccer and other women over Judy. They get engaged, but by that point, does the new Judy Benjamin really want to spend her life as a doctor's wife? We all know where this is going and Private Benjamin doesn't surprise us. Somehow the movie loses its legs after Judy graduates from basic training. Once she became a competent, determined, useful woman: I felt the movie had little to say or do after that. It all lost steam. The entire subplot with the French doctor simply emphasizes what we already know about the "new" Judy Benjamin. Did we really think she would slip back into her old ways?
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