Biloxi Blues

In one of the many looks at days gone by, Neil Simon's alter ego Eugene Morris Jerome (Matthew Broderick) and friends go down to Biloxi, Mississippi, in early 1945 for basic training. Once there, they have to cope with one bad-ass sergeant (Christopher Walken) and a status quo totally unlike the one in New York. But we also see how the experience turns Eugene into a very different person, partially due to his relationship with local babe Daisy (Penelope Ann Miller).

"Biloxi Blues", in my opinion, is far from Mike Nichols's best movie. I find it having strength in showing these young men's coming of age and wondering what to do with their future. But still, it's fun to see the environs of the WWII-era South. And I really liked Eugene's fake name when he met that one woman; I couldn't have come up with anything like that! Worth seeing, along with "Brighton Beach Memoirs".

When Matthew Broderick played Ferris Bueller, who ever would have guessed that he would later play the guy - or the alter ego thereof - who wrote "The Odd Couple"?

The timing for my catching of this flick couldn't have been more appropriate. I caught it with a few of my squadmates on a 72-hour pass at the post theater on Ft. Benning, in the middle of my 12-weeks of basic training and infantry school. It was the summer of 1988, "Biloxi" had just hit the screens, and it was the hottest summer on record in 25-years in the already quite sultry city of Columbus, Georgia (about two hours south of Atlanta).

Just imagine, an army base theater -- that had changed very little from its WW2 days -- filled with 200+ Army recruits in uniform, on pass, watching a movie about Army recruits on pass! It was a hilarious deja vu, although I suspect that such irony was lost on the majority of the individuals present that night.

Anyways, my favorite scenes in the movie include the following: Matthew Broderick (as Pvt. Eugene Jerome) moving through the chow line at breakfast for the first time, when the army cook slings some unmentionable godforsaken gloop on his stainless steel G.I. mess tray. The look on Eugene's face is worth its weight in gold as it was almost as if he had been insulted and violated at the same time. (This is especially funny for anyone who has ever stood in a messhall chowline and eaten army "food" before.)

My next favorite scene was when Eugene makes up a game with his bunkmates one night, about what they would do with the last 72 hours of their lives. What every man reveals about himself is not only telling, but an ominous harbinger of what is to come. Hennesey, for example, asks to be with his family. The others scoff. Little do they know, however, that soon enough, even that modest hope will seem like a pipedream to the starcrossed Hennesey.

The funniest aspects of Neil Simon's mostly autobiographically inspired play though, is his comedic depiction of the inevitable culture clash that invariably occurs when the New York quasi-intellectualism and Jewish urbane sensibility that Eugene Jerome and Arnold Epstein are products of, confronts head on the southern white-redneck military subculture that Sgt. Toomey represents.

This theme especially struck a chord with me, having come down to Georgia for boot camp from Chicago that summer. It was quite a culture shock for me upon my first visit to the south. when I stepped off the bus at Ft. Benning, as I quickly had to get myself accustomed to the almost incomprehensible southern accents, idiosyncratic differences in attitude and weird regional expressions employed by our mostly colorful, yet totally profane and predominantly redneck drill sergeants at Ft. Benning.

Another aspect about this film that touched me personally is the fact that it was filmed filmed almost entirely at Ft. Chaffee in Ft. Smith Arkansas, where I had trained extensively when I was in the U.S. Army. From WW1 to the early 1990s, Ft. Chaffee was an active U.S. Army reservation that has since been mothballed.

Being able to see scenes of Ft. Chaffee, especially the exterior and interior shots of Chaffee's vintage WW2-era barracks on my very rare DVD version which I am most fortunate to have, always brings back some rather fond -- and not so fond memories -- of the times I spent at Chaffee. This movie mostly reminds me of all those days and nights I spent training in those chigger and tick-ridden forests, doing PT around post, and living in those godforsaken WW2-era barracks.

Hats off to a great five-star WW2 coming-of-age flick!

I must say I'm a little surprised this movie did not scoring higher with the IMDb readers. I really expected it to be marked higher. While the movie is a comedy I would not say it is hysterically funny, so perhaps that is why the score is not higher. Maybe people felt it should have been funnier. I don't know.

Regardless, this movie is very well done and funny. Not funny as in a bust your gut kind of way - but funny enough to make you smile and laugh most of the time. It has a few serious moments that tie it into the reality of war and living in the armed forced. Although it is period sensitive the writers did well to make it applicable even years later.

The acting is excellent, and Walken is brilliant as the complex Sgt. in charge of the young troops. I'm not sure Walken was ever better in a role, he is just pure genius.

The rest of the cast is wonderful as well, from top to bottom you end up liking the cast more and more as the movie unfolds. And in the end it is impossible to say anyone was miscast or uncomfortable.

I would say if you have not seen this movie, you should because it is a classic.

I always thought 1988 was one of the best years at the cinema (together with 1984, 1990/1991 and 2000).

I've seen this movie several times before, but not in a very long time. It's just as good as I remembered, perhaps even more. Excellent semi- autobiography comedy/drama about recruits in boot camp during WWII. Excellent writing by Neil Simon based on his play. Excellent cast - Matthew Broderick, Christopher Walken and many unknown others, all perfect in their roles, even the supporting cast in tiny roles (the girl playing the hooker and Penelope Ann Miller who is damn cute). Good production and good direction by Mike Nichols.

Like GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, this is a great example of taking a play and making it into a GOOD cinematic presentation. The writing has a perfect combination of comedy and drama and all the characters are well defined and interesting - not like in many others movies in which the supporting characters blend with each other.

I just realized that the play and the Eugene Morris Jerome character are part of a semi-biography trilogy by Neil Simon. Corey Parker, who plays Arnold Epstein "the intellectual Jew" to perfection, also played Eugene (Matthew Broderick's character) in a later TV production, Broadway BOUND (1992) with Jonathan Silverman who himself played Eugene in BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS (1986). And to close the loop, Matthew Broderick played in BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS on Broadway.

I give 7.5/10 for the first half and 7/10 for the second half.

OK, we all have our favourite poignant movies right?....you know the type - the ones that hold you in rapture - time and again, because it speaks to you on a very personal level and effortlessly touches some part of your emotions that you keep hidden from the world - evoking deeply sad or blissfully happy memories from our own passage through life. Biloxi Blues is that movie for me.

Which of us do not carry emotional scars from; Our first time away from home. Our first time interacting with a group of strangers in a mutual climate. Our first sexual encounter. Our fist kiss. Our first love. Our first brush with authority. Our first glimpse at death.

Biloxi Blues is a movie that embraces many of the "rites of passage" that we all face in life and deals with them using comedy as a foil to gently explore them, without diminishing their poignancy. Neil Simon is peerless in this. The casting is faultless. The acting is immaculate. The humor is intelligent.

If you haven't seen this movie, do so. You can thank me later.