atlasmb
Goldie Hawn plays Kay Walsh and Ed Harris plays her husband, Jack, who enters the service in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Left alone, she--like many women who responded to the need for stateside "manpower"--takes a job at a factory and learns of the joys of hard, meaningful work.A coworker named Lucky (Kurt Russell) tries to get Kay to go out with him. After many months, she succumbs to his attentions and they embark on an affair.The film focuses on Kay and Lucky, but it is really about the social upheaval that occurred during WWII. By necessity, great strides were made in blurring the lines between the standard gender roles. After the war, there was some regression to prior roles, but the genie was already out of the bottle. It was the beginning of lasting changes.Likewise, some rules of (moral) behavior were blurred or bent. In the film, the affair of Kay and Lucky is portrayed as a happy thing, though Kay surely feels guilt. But we also see that the friends and coworkers who surround them also accept their relationship--not necessarily on a permanent basis, but at least for the duration of the war, which to some extent has suspended the conventions of society. When Jack comes home on 48 hour leave, she says, "I'm not the same. And neither are you."The film is not very subtle, but it really captures the era of the forties. The acting is solid but, as others have noted, Christine Lahti as the neighbor and coworker, Hazel, really stands out. For a more compelling film of this era, see "The Way We Were".
SnoopyStyle
It's 1941 Santa Monica. Kay Walsh (Goldie Hawn) is happily married. Her fisherman husband Jack (Ed Harris) enlists after Pearl Harbor. Kay gets a job at the aircraft plant despite Jack's objections. Their lounge singer neighbor Hazel (Christine Lahti) is tired of her manager Archibald 'Biscuits' Touie (Fred Ward) and doesn't like the Walshes either who often snicker at her. Eventually, the two women become best of friends at the sexist plant on the swing shift from four to midnight. Kay starts to fall for her supervisor trumpet player Mike 'Lucky' Lockhart (Kurt Russell).He's a player hound-dogging a married woman. She doesn't come off that well either. There has to be a higher degree of douchness from Jack to excuse her cheating on him. He is a male chauvinist but not necessarily worst than everybody else including Lucky. As a rom-com, it's very awkward. I really couldn't take the bad romance. For this to work, this has to be a darker drama. All the lightness has to go. Goldie Hawn is the wrong person to go there. There is a wrong tone to the movie. I don't know which version I saw although I suspect it's not the director's cut.
jjnxn-1
Nice period feeling and an interesting premise that doesn't get a lot of attention, women's role in the workplace during WWII. They should have focused on that and left the weak love story out and would had a better film. The problem is that Goldie's and Russell's characters are not really people you can feel much empathy for, she's spoiled and selfish and he's really rather a jerk whereas the more interesting and relatable characters played by Ed Harris and Christine Lahti are kept too much in the background. Christine Lahti however steals every second she's on screen apparently pre-release tinkering cut some of her best work to throw the spotlight more Goldie's way, perhaps costing her a best supporting actress Oscar although she was nominated. You'll spot Holly Hunter early in her career as one of the factory girls. Not without its merits and attractions but less than it could have been.
JasparLamarCrabb
A great movie...and probably the last really good thing Goldie Hawn has done.During WWII, housewife Hawn is left to fend for herself when husband Ed Harris is shipped off. She gets a job at the local factory and has her consciousness raised after befriending tough Christine Lahti and hooking up with ne'er do well Kurt Russell. The film seesaws between comedy and drama without missing a beat. Hawn is wonderful and the supporting cast is first-rate: Lahti, Russell, Holly Hunter, Charles Napier, and in a cameo, Roger Corman as the factory owner. Look fast for Belinda Carlisle as a USO singer.
AD
