BEST FRIENDS

title: BEST FRIENDS

year: 1982

cast: Goldie Hawn, Burt Reynolds, Ron Silver

rating: **

This early eighties star-driven grown-up sex comedy was written by soon-to-be director Barry Levinson and Valerie Curtin (who played the original "Vera", the dim-witted waitress in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore"). As I sat watching cute Goldie and handsome Burt, I imagined if Barry and Valerie were up on that screen playing themselves, no one would care. Two mundane humans having relationship problems wouldn't even merit a city college stage play... at least not a good one. But you cast two gorgeous stars and thus, a film is made. "Best Friends" is not much of a love story, it's not much of a drama, and there's hardly any comedy... except for a funny moment during the wedding centering on the mispronunciation of a vow by the priest, played by Richard Libertini. Goldie and Burt visit her parents, then his parents... Burt hates her parents, Goldie hates his... reminding me of a movie that would come out many years later, the recent "Four Christmases". And either are that terrific.

SWING SHIFT

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.