Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! (1958)

Waste of time

Good movie but grossly overrated

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Terrible how the talents of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were wasted in this nonsensical film.Without the space complication, this could have easily been a film in the 1930s with Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant playing up against Myrna Loy or Jean Arthur.Joan Collins is her usual temptress in trying to break up a marriage and Jack Carson is the idiotic captain along with the more rational Gale Gordon in this farce.The July 4 Grace (Woodward) plans for the town are disastrous which best describes the film. The parting of Carson to the moon at the end is equally ridiculous.The film proves that civic responsibility and breaking up a marriage don't really together.

You've gotta feel sorry for Harry (Paul Newman) in "Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!". His wife (Joanne Woodward) is ALWAYS busy with committees and projects and never has time for him. No sooner does he convince her to take out some time so they can go off to a romantic hotel than she agrees to head up yet another committee--one to fight a new army base coming to town! This time, she not only agrees to be the head but volunteers Harry for it as well! All Harry wants is to be with his wife....alone! At the same time, a VERY sexy neighbor (Joan Collins) is suffering from the same problem with her husband--a man who is practically never home. However, she deals with it very differently--she decides she wants Harry! And, she'll do ANYTHING to get him--even ruin his marriage. For a 1950s film, "Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!" is an amazingly sexual film. Think about it--the premise is that Harry is very sexually frustrated through no fault of his own! And, again and again, his libido is unfulfilled.So is this little comedy worth seeing? Yes. However, just because it has Newman and Woodward does NOT mean it's a great film--which it isn't. The film suffers from two main problems--the unfulfilled libido and the marital problems in Harry's marriage do seem to go on a bit too long. Additionally, I found it difficult to enjoy at times because Woodward's character is really difficult to like. Plus, towards the end it all just degenerates into a bit of a mess. Still, it's a cute film and a decent way to spend 106 minutes of your life provided your expectations are not especially high.By the way, the pageant about Pocahontas was perhaps even more insanely inaccurate than the Disney film. Imagine--Pocahontas greeting the Pilgrims lead by John Smith at Plymouth!! Firecrackers! Crazy.

My local library picked this up as part of it's own fiftieth anniversary celebration last year, so this week I finally got around to watching it. With Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in the cast, one would expect so much more, but sadly that's not the case. The film is too farcical to be considered a screwball comedy, and relies too heavily on slapstick and buffoonery to make it's comic points. It's perhaps a tad above your typical beach blanket genre film, but without the girls, except Tuesday Weld who was embarrassingly juvenile. Other reviewers on this board who feel that she stole the show apparently missed the scene where she squealed in delight at Corporal Opie's (Tom Gilson) rendition of 'You're My Boojum'. Boojum, or Boo for short, is a word I've never heard before, and I'm sure never will again, unless I watch this one more time, and that's not likely.It's too bad too, because on the face of it, this vehicle had enough talent to pull off a capable production, but it got frittered away somewhere along the line. Newman comes across as absolutely goofy most of the time, especially in that chandelier/choo-choo escapade with Angela Hoffa (Joan Collins). As his wife Grace, Joanne Woodward is almost lifeless, something the script obviously called for by placing her on every pointless committee in existence in Putnam's Landing. Gale Gordon and Jack Carson portrayed their characters pretty much straight from the play book, but it was disappointing to see Dwayne Hickman as a neutered version of Marlon Brando from "The Wild One". It wouldn't have been so bad if he had tried out his Dobie Gillis TV role, I think that would have been much more effective.Which made it all the more puzzling to view the theatrical trailer on the 20th Century Fox DVD release, where Bob Hope practically rolls on the ground in a fit of laughter while congratulating director Leo McCarey on his cinematic achievement. I would like to have known what Hope REALLY thought. For viewers back in the day, the redeeming feature might have been seeing this one in full color, as the trailer itself for some dubious reason was offered in black and white.

I saw this film with my then fiancée, Sheila, in Kilburn, London in 1959. From the very beginning we knew we were watching something special. A great battle of the sexes with wonderful chemistry between real-life husband and wife team Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. We couldn't stop laughing and even now, 48 years on, we still think it was a really good and funny film. Joan Collins gave a good performance, perfectly cast as "the other woman". It is a pity that this team of very talented actors were not brought together for more projects in the same genre. When or if it comes out on DVD, we'll certainly get a copy. Certainly a "feel-good" film to relish, in the same vein as the wonderful "What's up Doc?" with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal.