Just one in a string of Murray/Ramis classic comedies.

Rating: Null/10 (4 June 2007)

Harold Ramis absolutely cannot strike a pose without a glint in his eye and a rye smile on his face. He is just filled with "funny". We owe him Ghostbusters, Caddyshack, Groundhog Day, and this movie, "Stripes." Take ordinary human conditions, and turn them into something interesting and funny.
Bill Murray is John Winger and Harold Ramis is Russell Ziskey, a couple of slackers trying to keep gainful employment and make ends meet. In the one day that begins this movie, Winger quits his cabbie job, abandoning a stuffy lady on the bridge, gets his car repossessed, and has his girlfriend leave him. At the shoe shine shop, watching an "Uncle Sam Wants You" TV spot, he convinces his buddy Ziskey that they would do better by enlisting in the Army. After all, free food and free clothes! Warren Oates is in fine form as drill Sgt. Hulka. P.J. Soles as Stella Hansen and Sean Young as Louise Cooper, both MPs on base, serve as the love interests of the two men. John Candy is one of the raw recruits, 'Ox' Oxberger, while John Larroquette is good as the neurotic and useless Capt. Stillman.
I watched it with Emily, a recent high school graduate who is enrolling at West Point this summer, as her introduction to basic training in the Army!
SPOILERS: Hulka gets injured by a wayward projectile, and the guys have to train themselves the final night before the graduation review. They are unpolished, but disciplined, and so impress the general that they are sent to Italy on special assignment. Winger and Ziskey, as usual, get everyone in a bind, in an unauthorized venture into Communist Czek territory, but Winger and Ziskey also come to the rescue.