Best movie of this year hands down!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Terrible how the talents of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were wasted in this nonsensical film.Without the space complication, this could have easily been a film in the 1930s with Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant playing up against Myrna Loy or Jean Arthur.Joan Collins is her usual temptress in trying to break up a marriage and Jack Carson is the idiotic captain along with the more rational Gale Gordon in this farce.The July 4 Grace (Woodward) plans for the town are disastrous which best describes the film. The parting of Carson to the moon at the end is equally ridiculous.The film proves that civic responsibility and breaking up a marriage don't really together.

You've gotta feel sorry for Harry (Paul Newman) in "Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!". His wife (Joanne Woodward) is ALWAYS busy with committees and projects and never has time for him. No sooner does he convince her to take out some time so they can go off to a romantic hotel than she agrees to head up yet another committee--one to fight a new army base coming to town! This time, she not only agrees to be the head but volunteers Harry for it as well! All Harry wants is to be with his wife....alone! At the same time, a VERY sexy neighbor (Joan Collins) is suffering from the same problem with her husband--a man who is practically never home. However, she deals with it very differently--she decides she wants Harry! And, she'll do ANYTHING to get him--even ruin his marriage. For a 1950s film, "Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!" is an amazingly sexual film. Think about it--the premise is that Harry is very sexually frustrated through no fault of his own! And, again and again, his libido is unfulfilled.So is this little comedy worth seeing? Yes. However, just because it has Newman and Woodward does NOT mean it's a great film--which it isn't. The film suffers from two main problems--the unfulfilled libido and the marital problems in Harry's marriage do seem to go on a bit too long. Additionally, I found it difficult to enjoy at times because Woodward's character is really difficult to like. Plus, towards the end it all just degenerates into a bit of a mess. Still, it's a cute film and a decent way to spend 106 minutes of your life provided your expectations are not especially high.By the way, the pageant about Pocahontas was perhaps even more insanely inaccurate than the Disney film. Imagine--Pocahontas greeting the Pilgrims lead by John Smith at Plymouth!! Firecrackers! Crazy.

when she realizes she likes boys, she just doesn't like Dwayne Hickman, it's sheer truth and delight! the rest of the cast is forced...Joanne Woodward is strident. Paul Newman is slumming, Joan Collins is adequate. Jack Carson is Carson. Dwayne Hickman deserves Weld's scorn. bad comedy, except for Weld's self-recognition. these 50's films try to be smart, but aren't. once in a while a performer can rise above the material. here it's only a young, precocious teenager who mesmerizes.Weld was given praise by none other than Pauline Kael. in her review of Weld's classic '68, "Pretty Poison", she suggested Weld didn't have the career she deserved, "and maybe it isn't just her unlucky name...maybe she's the kind of actress who doesn't let you know she's acting, like Geraldine Page or Estelle Parsons do. how else can an actress give the kind of performances Tuesday Weld has given in "Rally 'round the Flag, Boys!", "Soldier in the Rain", "The Cincinatti Kid", and "Lord Love a Duck", and still not being taken seriously?"

Playing his first comedy in "Rally, 'Round the Flag, Boys!" Newman was in the expert hands of Leo McCarey, who had directed Laurel and Hardy, W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers… The Newmans are hard1y in that class, and the film is one of McCarey's lesser efforts, but it's often a refreshing reminder of thirties screwball farce as well as a frequently incisive satire on suburban life… Newman is a typical Connecticut commuter with a good job in Manhattan, whose wife (Woodward) spends all her time in community affairs, leaving him frustrated, and whose two sons are so hypnotized by television they hard1y notice him—so he escapes with alcohol and daydreams…When the Army schedules a top secret base for their town, the couple are on opposing sides: she heads the protest committee; he, a reserve officer, is "drafted" as public relations man to win over the town… Their marriage really goes downhill when she catches him in a compromising (but innocent) situation with a sexy neighbor (Joan Collins). Newman is often charming, but generally, in a role Jack Lemmon would have walked through, he overacts outrageously, trying so hard to be funny…Truly, some of the gags situations are forced, as when the drunken Newman and Collins dance the Cha Cha, swing on chandeliers, and fall down stairs; or when Newman is caught, literally with his pants down, turning away the predatory Collins and trying to explain to the outraged Woodward… But even Rock Hudson and Doris Day would have made something of these scenes… The Newmans are reduced to grimacing, exaggerated gestures and extreme over-reactions…The Newmans were still young, but they played such older-generation types that a teenaged couple (Dwayne Hickman and Tuesday Weld) were added for the younger audience… Incredibly, Hickman, who does an inventive caricature of an American teenager, plays it as Marlon Brando! Imitating Brando's "Wild One" performance, he mumbles, stutters, and ambles about with the familiar anguished look