For the Boys come across as a vehicle for Bette Midler, and in my view there is nothing wrong with that, but it does have issues.The film is fairly story driven as it tells the tale of two performers who first come together during 1940's wartime, and their partnership lasts until the present day (which is the 1990s), with all the highs and lows in between being covered.The strengths of the film are Bette Midler and the songs. Midler is a charismatic actress who draws your attention whenever she is on the screen, and, of course, when she is singling. All the songs are fun and hummable. The movie really does have a good soundtrack. The biggest drawback of the film is James Caan's character of Eddie Sparks who is supposed to be sharing the billing with Midler's Dixie Leonard, but Eddie does not seem to have any depth to him, and no back story to help you work out his true nature. The film takes the side of Dixie Leonard 100% of the time, and Eddie is painted as the bad guy, but it would have helped to fill in a bit more of his character to give the film some pull on your affections for both characters, but unfortunately Eddie has nothing to show you. The other drawback is the portrayal of "the horrors of war", which is done very poorly in an otherwise pivotal scene involving Edie and Dixie performing during the Vietnam war. There is an attack during the show, but the realisation of it on the screen is pretty badly done, a lot of smoke and people diving about in slow motion does not make a "Saving Private Ryan". What I did like though was the fairly effective progression through time as the years go by, and the main characters age and part ways. To be fair there is probably too much content for a single feature film, this would have been a wonderful mini series, which would have allowed for more development of all the changes of situation that the characters go through. The story is topped and tailed with a "Lifetime Awards" show that is honouring the duo, and as it is Midler's character that is telling the story through flashbacks from the word go, there is even more weight given to the bias on this being her story, not Eddie's.The film ends, I'm sorry to say, on a pretty bum note with the duo accepting their award at the glitzy show, sporting some very cheesy Hollywood "old age" make-up that (rather unfairly) turns Midler into a twinkle-eyed, apple cheeked old granny, but turns Caan into a decrepit, shuffling ghoul. Ah well, it's mostly successful, and the songs are great, but it's only half a movie without giving Eddie's side of the story.

For quite a few years, Bette Midler-who had originally wowed audiences with her singing and joking on stage before Johnny Carson got her national exposure on TV-was in hit movie after hit movie. So she formed her own production company of which the first hit from that was Beaches. This one she really wanted to make as it cast her as a singer-comedienne paired with a hot comic during World War II. James Caan played that comic who seemed partially based on Bob Hope. The Devine Miss M's character also had a husband who's a soldier and a son who became one during Vietnam. I'll stop there and just say there's both comedy and drama and plenty of singing from Miss M. She does her best with the material which is overwrought on some places. Mr. Caan isn't bad, either. There's also a nice turn by George Segal as Miss Midler's uncle and Caan's head writer. It's too bad it didn't do well, box office-wise but of you're a Midler fan, For the Boys is highly recommended.

Both brash and plastic, Mark Rydell's "For The Boys" isn't ever convincing, but with so much talent on-hand it is seldom dull. Playing the star-duo of a musical-comedy act which spans the decades, James Caan and Bette Midler have no chemistry together. Their bickering is contrived and mechanical, and their routines on stage don't soar with hilarity (everything about this union is heavily grounded, and the actors look unhappy throughout). Bette Midler is good when she's flying solo, and not being forced to be wacky. She has a lovely moment singing "In My Life" to a group of soldiers, but the scene is undermined by gunfire (a cue for director Rydell to make a ham-handed statement about the senselessness of war). Lackluster, overeager, and unsubtle, the picture has too much star-power to be lousy, is instead glossy, well-produced swill. ** from ****

I thought this movie was a 10+! The flashback format is interesting and watching the characters' lives and attitudes progress through the present-day Dixie's reminiscences. This is why it is puzzling to me that another person's comment contained the following criticism in regards to Bette's character Dixie: "She is perhaps nave and oblivious to what war is about and maybe even thinks it's just one big party and nobody really dies or suffers. By the end when she goes to Vietnam she is a vulgar, disgusting, embittered slob who harbors some anger that the GIs no longer swoon over her as they did a quarter of a century or so earlier. The GI's are of a different generation and she can't relate to them or why they have the attitude they do. She is perhaps also angry with herself for not being able to be enthused about performing for the fighting men of this war the way she was years ago. How does she end up like this?"Huh??? Dixie was an angry, embittered woman because Eddie Sparks sold out on her uncle! Her volatile reaction to his betrayal begins the systematic annihilation of her career. She didn't want to go on tour with him and only did so because he talked her into it, "For the Boys"!If anything, it is Eddie Sparks who is oblivious to the changes of the times during the Vietnam war and is unable to make the leap from the USO tours of the previous wars to this strange and confusing part of our history and it is Dixie who takes control of the out-of-hand situation in her inimitable style by getting the rowdy soldiers back in line and then not only sings them the quintessential song of the era, but caps her low-key performance with the peace sign! My god, SHE was the one who was truly in tune with the confusion these soldiers were experiencing!So, I have to ask...did we see the same movie?