title: SWING SHIFT
year: 1984
genre: Romance/Comedy
starring: Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Ed Harris, Christine Lahti
rating: **1/2
Centers on a housewife whose husband goes to war in 1941, right after Pearl Harbor. Thus Goldie Hawn is called, along with many other women, to aid in the war effort by working in a war plane factory. Christine Lahti plays her outgoing and somewhat lusty best friend, a failed nightclub singer who's got the hots for Fred Ward, the nightclub's owner. And Kurt Russell plays a trumpet playing player named "Lucky" who doesn't have to fight the war because of a heart condition... which doesn't seem to exist as he can play trumpet all night, drink, chain smoke, and have an affair. According to Demme the movie was ruined in the editing room, making it more of a standard romantic comedy than a character-study of women working in factories. It is a somewhat entertaining time-waster, but it could have been much, much better, centering more on Hawn and Lauti than the Hawn/Russell romance.And at the very end, when Hawn and Lauti (along with their female workmates) look back upon their good times, the audience too wishes there was more of that to experience.
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