ViewGuide

Created Jun 18, 2013 09:28AM PST • Edited Sep 24, 2017 03:52PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   Hail The Conquering Hero is a welcome stop on the Tour de Sturges, even if not one of the best.

   The Greatest Generation dealt with challenge differently than we 2nd Millenniums do, to put it mildly. Preston Sturges made Hail The Conquering Hero during World War II, right after the Marines lost damn near 10,000 men at Guadalcanal. (A name every spellchecker knows.) Yet his comedy of 1944 places a squad of Marines just back from Guadalcanal in the middle of a screwball comedy about a favorite son with a bad back. It takes balls to be funny in that situation, especially because the war was still far from won.

   More amusingly admirable than LOL funny, Sturges’ war comedy is well worth viewing for war movie fans and war comedy fans in particular. For anyone pursuing the Tour de Sturges, it’s a must see.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Eddie Bracken’s Woodrow Truesmith is damn near a WWII Forrest Gump, so gullibly earnest is he. The comparison only goes so far, since Bracken’s character is a small town’s most-likely-to-succeed favorite son, yet the performance anticipates the one Hanks gave half a century later.

   William Demarest pops up in most Preston Sturges movies. The future Uncle Charlie gives one of his best performances as Master Gunnery Sgt. Heppelfinger, a gruff Marine who lifts Bracken’s Truesmith by the scruff of his neck to turn him into a hero.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    Hail the Conquering Hero comes from the incomparable Preston Sturges and Company, the last of his epic run of 7 Major Movies in 5 Years. Viewing them all is what I call the Tour de Sturges.

    Unlike some of the others, this one is funny, just not very LOL. Still, it’s a classic for its satirical take on 1940s small town America as much as on how the Greatest Generation handled WWII on the home front.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Very Good 3.5

13. Music Good 3.0

14. Visuals Great 4.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.6

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Gentle 1.5

19. Rudeness Salty 1.7

21. Reality

    Glib 2.0

    The Greatest Generation weren’t necessarily more patriotic or idealistic than we are. Hail The Conquering Hero proves that, screwball hit that it was.

    They were dutiful and neighborly. Neighborly in a way that digital dudes and dudettes don’t dig, on account of how restrictive all that prying and judging is. We’re so much more modern now, post-modern even. Between the IRS and the NSA, we have the government to pry into our lives. Who needs neighbors.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.6

23. Biological Glib 1.9

24. Physical Glib 1.5