Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

skullislandsurferdotcom Calling "Swing Shift" a Jonathan Demme film is like calling "Cape Fear" a Martin Scorsese picture. Sure, they directed these movies but were their hearts behind it? In the case of "Swing Shift", there's hardly any heart at all... at least not one that beats. The story centers on a housewife who's husband (played by Ed Harris) goes to war in 1941 after Pearl Harbor. As he's out fighting the Nazis (and/or Japanese), Goldie is called upon, 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 one of the most despicable characters in film history... at least to me. 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, smoke, and have a great old time lusting after our married main character who's husband is risking his necks to literally save the world. A character who doesn't fight in Vietnam is one thing; but World War 2, a war in which "we knew who we were fighting", is something else altogether. According to Demme, the movie was chop suey in the editing room, making it more of a standard romantic comedy than a character-study of women working in factories. At the very end the women are at a party looking back on how hard it was, all the trouble they went through, and how they overcame and became good workers, but since the film centered more on the Hawn/Russell romance, the viewer feels as if they'd missed something... or, a lot of things. And the opening/closing credit song sung by Carly Simon is very out of place in a film set in the forties. It is a somewhat entertaining time-waster, I'll give it that. But it could have been much, much better, and the fact it does entertain at a certain level makes it more frustrating; adding insult to injury and leaving one limp by the closing credits.

moewadle There is a goof that would only be noticed by someone about as old as I am . There is a scene where a car pulls up to a stop sign. In fact the camera puts a rather big part of the stop sign in a brief scene. Now, currently we all know that stop signs have a standard coloring of white lettering on a red background. But in the 1940s, during World War II and perhaps into the 1950s stop signs had black lettering on a yellow background. This is probably not realized by many people born in and after the 1950s because so much of the photography back in those days was in black and white. So, you don't often see a an old magazine photo of a street scene in color so even if a stop sign was in the hypothetical magazine photo it would have to be in color to be noticed. So, the movie showed the stop sign as white on red but to be accurate for the time period it should have been black on yellow. I remember being perhaps 8-10 years old (born in 1942) when the standard stop sign color scheme was changed to present white on red. This was reported to be easier to see by drivers so traffic safety was increased. So, I want to register this blooper by the makers of the film. Moe in Iowa

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.

PinkPiggie I thought the film was excellent -- not only did it accurately depict what was going on during the war, but the interactions of characters was excellent as was the storyline -- it examines friendship, adultery, remorse and a wide range of other emotions.The chemistry between Hawn and Russell is so thick you could cut it with a knife -- this was, in fact, the film where they met and began their life together as a couple off-screen as well.Adultery was an all too common reality of war that should not be ignored -- this is one of the few films that shows what happened on this side of the ocean, rather than concentrating on the bloodshed and adultery on the servicemen side.In the end, the film takes the heartache and remorse and reaffirms the ability of people to choose to forgive, go on with their marriage and re-establish the love.