Review of Stripes (2005) by Ben L — 12 Dec 2015

Stripes has some comedy magic, which one might expect from the cast. The real surprise is how many laughs they get from Warren Oates, probably the least comedic actor there. I like these classic tales of a slacker joining the army and somehow bumbling his way to be an unlikely success, and Bill Murray is the perfect actor to fit that role.

The physical comedy and the witty dialogue is pretty great. However, it doesn't seem to have enough jokes written to carry the entire run-time. As a result, at a certain point they just start to throw anything against the wall trying to get it to stick.

The biggest moment to demonstrate this is an utterly pointless mud wrestling scene. It's as if they were in desperation mode so they said "Just add in some boobs, oh, and John Candy falling all over the place.

That'll be funny!" Sadly, it is not. There was no humor in these moments and it completely sidetracks the whole plot. Plus they needed to give a better arc to Bill Murray's character. It would have made him more endearing if he showed just the slightest sign of improvement.

I can already anticipate the "Lighten up, Francis" comments this review will get, but believe me for the first 30-45 minutes I was 100% sold on this movie and would have rated it highly. However as it progressed the humor got weaker and the characters didn't change, so I started to check out.

It's not a terrible movie, but certainly not one I'd recommend.