The male Private Benjamin

Rating: 9/10 (13 December 2014)

I really enjoy watching this army comedy from the early eighties with Bill Murray and John Candy in top form.
The story is about two misfits, Murray is a cab driver who decides to dump an irate woman in his cab on a freeway and is sacked from his job, while Howard Ramis plays his friend, who is a useless English teacher and whose job is on the line. Broke and desperate, Murray's girlfriend has dumped him, they decide to join the army.
The film for me is more memorable for its lesser characters. John Candy is hilarious as a massively overweight recruit, Ox, who joins the army to lose weight and Cooter, who joined up to avoid being drafted only to be told the draft ended nine years earlier. Also good for a laugh is the platoon commander, Captain Stillman, an incompetent buffoon who plays with toy soldiers and loses a top secret weapon.
For me my favourite parts are the mud wrestling competition, where Ox takes on two lady wrestlers and wins, the graduation parade where the recruits start dancing and win over a senior officer, and the secret weapon they are assigned to guard in Italy, a Winnebago which doubles up as a tank and ends up behind the Iron Curtain by mistake.
Apart from looking a little dated now( someone appears in an anti disco t shirt), Stripes is a hilarious comedy that has Bill Murray in top form and its mixture of comedy, romance( two very attractive female MPs) and a war film is top rate entertainment.