100 Movie Project - Stripes

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The following post contains spoilers for Stripes and Blade Runner.

I had a hard time with this movie. It’s a dumb comedy but that’s a genre I like. And who doesn’t like Bill Murray. But it was also a product of its time and some of that is…dated by modern standards. To put it nicely.

The film follows Murray’s John Winger who’s pretty immature and lazy and loses his job and girlfriend because of it. While talking with his friend Russell Ziskey, played by future Ghostbusters co-star Harold Ramis, he inexplicably decides to enlist in the army. Sort of flimsy to be honest. But it’s a movie and it’s setting up it’s comedy so I’ll let it slide.

Some of the comedy is funny although none of it was particularly memorable. And the story got pretty ridiculous as Winger and Ziskey break into a Soviet base to save their platoon after the Soviet army captured them. Because they were looking for Winger and Ziskey who had stolen an armored vehicle and gone AWOL. Nothing super memorable but also nothing particularly bad here. As long as you go into the movie knowing what it is and not expecting Citizen Kane you can enjoy it.

Or at least you could if it wasn’t for two problems, both relating to a sort of crass representation of women. The first is the incredibly flimsy, tacked-on romance. Winger and Ziskey fall for a pair of female MPs who at first treat them as they deserve to be treated. The two men clearly don’t care much for the military or authority and treat them as such. And the women respond in kind. But later on in the movie the two MPs inexplicably fall in love with Winger and Ziskey. Now movies tend to have romances that don’t make a ton of sense but this one may be the most outlandish I’ve ever seen. To the point where it took away from the movie.

The second is the way that one of the movie’s characters, John Larroquette’s Captain Stillman, ogles some showering women in one scene. I guess the scene serves to help reinforce that Stillman is sort of incompetent (he is) while providing the audience with some fan service. And maybe in 1981 it was left at that. But in 2022 the military captain secretly watching a bunch of naked women bathe came off as incredibly creepy. It was similar to the scene in Blade Runner when Deckard tries to tell Rachael he has feeling for her and borderline assaults her. There are possible explanations for why he did that but whatever they are the scene made me a little uncomfortable.

After watching both films I have to wonder if this is just something that nobody batted an eye at 30 years ago that just didn’t age well. And if it’s something I’m going to encounter in more older films. I also don’t think it’s a reason not to watch these films. They still have something to offer and can be enjoyable, you just need to remember when they were made and accept some of the shortcomings they may have because of it.

The moral of this post? Watch and enjoy old movies but remember when they were made.

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