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This film is about a unfortunate young lady whose husband dies on their wedding night. She copes with her sorrow by mistakenly enlisting in the United States army.

"Private Benjamin" is very funny! Even the film is already thirty years old, the jokes are timeless. The scene that Goldie Hawn explaining that she is sent to the wrong army is hilarious. Well, actually the whole section about her adjusting to the fact that Army life is not a holiday is hilarious. Even though I have seen similar story lines before, it is still hilarious. If only all the comedies stood the test of time like "Private Benjamin"!

Private Banjamin is an uneven film, but it is also an entertaining one. The first half is very focused, but the second half does get rather scatter-shot and dull. While most of it is funny, some of the laughs have a tendency to become sporadic, while the romance felt forced for my tastes. On the other hand, the film is at least nice to look at with good cinematography, editing and scenery, the story is decently paced and maintains interest and at its best the script is smart and snappy. Goldie Hawn is a very likable lead, and there is a sterling support cast including Eileen Brennan and Harry Dean Stanton. Overall, a very decent and entertaining film. 7/10 Bethany Cox

What I've always enjoyed about this film is that, once you get past all the slapstick and Jewish American Princess jokes, you find the story of a sheltered young woman seeking her identity and independence. Judy Benjamin has been raised in a very coddled existence, believing she can do nothing, and that her only value is to be someone's wife, or attached to a person in some way. When her husband dies on her wedding night, she foolishly joins the army, where her inability is played for laughs. But this is not what the film is really about, in the long run. When her parents come to retrieve her, Barbara Barrie as Judy's mom is literally holding the pen, showing Judy where to sign. To me, this scene is very believable. It's as if Judy finally realizes that she has set herself up to fail. She decides to stay and proves that she can do a good job, she just believed she couldn't.

Perhaps my perspective is different because I saw this film first in 1980 when I was 18 years old, but I still enjoy it to this day. I can overlook the portions that are not very PC by today's standards. It was, after all, a different world then. I find Goldie Hawn's performance to have great comic timing and believability. Eileen Brennan is memorable in her role, even though it is a bit stereotypical by today's standards. Barbara Barrie and Sam Wanamaker are hilarious as Judy's parents, and Robert Webber is unforgettable as Col. Clay Thornbush. I will always enjoy this film, perhaps always from a different viewpoint.

Hawn's string of successes in the 1980's, Swing Shift, Overboard, Protocol, Seems Like Old Times, and Private Benjamin, are among my favorite comedies of all time. She has timing, presence, and character galore, and this one may just be at the top of my Goldie Hawn list.

The cast is extraordinary. Eileen Brennan is a showstopper as the, shall we say, less than feminine company commander and Benjamin's nemesis, but that's not the start of it. There's an embarrassment of talent here. Craig T. Nelson as the amorous Capt. Woodbridge, Armand Assante as the even more amorous Henri Tremont who sexes Benjamin up, and the still more amorous Albert Brooks, the husband who dies sexing her up, are all stellar. But Sam Wanamaker (see The Competition) and Robert Webber (both sadly deceased) are male role models who may not exactly set the bar very high as father figures, but add a delightful pseudo-machismo as counterpoint to all the talented women.

Mary Kay Place seems so young as a fellow recruit, even more so than in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, which is a nice segue to the fact that this, like many Hawn movies, draws from a distinguished television pedigree to deliver its surprising success.

This is one of those perfect little movies that I pull out of the DVD closet several times a year like visiting with an old friend, and it just occurred to me why. It's not nihilistic or deconstructionist or multi-plotted or any of the other crap that has supplanted story and dialog in too many movies since. It's sad that the only available version of the DVD is in pan and scan, as with some other great movies of this era, but I keep hoping for a widescreen release.

Favorite Line: "There are mine fields out there. Most of them are inert. However, some are ert." My recommendation: Enlist with Judy. You could use a good laugh.

I struggle a bit with the plausibility of the premise in Private Benjamin. I simply found it hard to believe that army recruiters would be so brazen about lying to people in order to get them to enlist. However, I'm all for an unlikely story of a screw-up being whipped into shape by the military. It is fodder for a lot of comedy, and I think that's where this movie shines. Those early scenes where we see her struggling through boot camp, and the contentious relationship with her drill instructor (played to perfection by Eileen Brennan) are rife with good laughs. It's kind of sad that the movie seems so anxious to move on from that storyline. There is some serious fast-forwarding through the fun of the movie thanks to needless montages.

The real problem with Private Benjamin is that it is a movie which should be about a spoiled-rotten rich girl learning to be useful, but instead it seems more interested in exploring her love life. The entire opening is an exploration of her new marriage and all that comes with that relationship, and then the final act is entirely about another romance that seems clearly doomed from the start. Pretty much everything after she leaves boot camp was disappointing for me, and I was struggling to figure out who thought that was a good idea. I still enjoy Goldie Hawn in any comedy setting, though. She has great timing, and tells a lot of the story with just her exaggerated expressions. My memory of Private Benjamin was that it was hilarious and all about her boot camp experience. Turns out that's what I thought because that is the only memorable part of a film which drags on through more plot than it needed.