Stage Door Canteen - A look back at more innocent times
Charlie Mudflats Chuck | 08/02/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This review is going to be very critical of and take a lot of the previous reviews of this movie to task. I evidently am way older (74) than most of the reviewers, but if the comments most of the previous reviewers made are any example of the difference between the understanding of what it meant in those WWII days to have patriotism, appreciation of the simpler times during which this WWII and many other similar WWII movies were made, the obvious difficulties in striking a balance between presenting the story of the Canteens back during WWII and still having a semblence of drama and quality, it is no wonder we have such disagreements on current war time problems in the year 2008. Don't the public schools teach anything about what conditions were like in the U.S. during those days? If they did, some of the really ignorant comments would not have been made. Do the persons who wrote these snide cricitisms about the naivete of the soldiers, how the girls were too straightlaced, etc., have any appreciation of the narrow and innocent social times present back in the WWII years? One critic said all the soldiers in the movie were white. That is a racist comment. Did that person have any knowledge or understanding of the long and bitter difficulties between races in those days? The Armed Forces were segregated, is that so hard to understand? In those days, the U.S. in many ways was a very racist country, didn't you understand that was the way things were back then? During WWII, in the movies, as in many other areas of social interaction, society was admittedly, and the U.S. Armed forces as well as the population in general were guilty of sometimes overt and sometimes quiet racial discrimination. Are the reviewers making comments ridiculing this movie aware at all about how times were then and how they have improved now? Or does it make you a better reviewer if you simply put down the movie? I am shocked at the snide remarks made about the movie, the actors, and yes, back in those days, we did refer to our enemies in words that were as hateful as possible, and these words were used in all segments of society, this because our enemies were at that time as close to being deserving of our hatred as is possible to be in wartime. Is this the first movie from the 1940's you reviewers have ever seen? Are you not aware that much of the arts, the books, the movies, etc, reflected the times and these were times, as we look back, that in many ways we were not proud of our society. I just have to say that most of the reviews I read were somewhat ignorant and unnecessarily vicious in their ridicule of what were vastly different times reflected in movies of that day. This movie was a fine example of gathering together many stars and musicians of the day, into a coherent and beautiful rendition of what it was like for soldiers to be leaving their country and maybe know they wouldn't return or for the home folks to have to put up with the rationing, and other privations at home and having their sons and husbands and boyfriends leaving, maybe never to be seen again. I hope my strong words will resonate with some of the unthinking criticisms of this movie and of the people from those long ago times."
Why I purchased Stage Door Canteen
B. Feldscher | Northern California | 11/30/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I like it because it makes the prominent entertainers of that time young again. It also evokes a time when, although we were at war, the family was together and the future was ahead of us. The humor is just as fresh and viable as it was back then."