Cheap Biloxi Blues (DVD) (Matthew Broderick, Christopher Walken) (Mike Nichols) Price

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Customer Reviews of Biloxi Blues

Although the whole cast is great, Matthew Broderick does a fine job portraying Eugene; just the right amount of incredulousness and irreverence to do the character justice. But he also carries the few bits of drama without many problems, so for any actor to handle comedy and drama with such flair is commendable.

Christopher Walken as the sadistic Sgt. Toomey steals the show, however, proving he's not just a bad guy in films... he's also a very FUNNY bad guy, with unerring comedic timing, that unfortunately doesn't get shown often enough.

A walk down memory lane for WWII veterans.
I showed this movie to my Dad, who is a WWII veteran, and he found it very amusing and nostalgic, althought he claimed that he NEVER saw a drill Sargeant like Sgt. Toomey. The movie is an adaptation of a play written by Neil Simon about his experiences in the army at the end of WWII. No it is not a war movie, since it takes place in basic training camp in Biloxi Mississippi. It is really a quaint and humorous little movie about the adventures and attitudes of a bunch of boys in their late teens, who have been unfortunate enough to get drafted into the army. This is a fairly common theme in movies, and a fairly timeless subject.

Jerome (Neil Simon) is a kid from New York who aspires to be a writter, and enjoys observing the antics of his post-adolescent commrades from a writters point of view. We see an excellent dynamic between the various types of boys who are thrown together into the same platoon, and an excellent dynamic between them and their nutty drill Sargeant (played by Christopher Walken) who has sustained a brain injury in North Africa. There is an excellent scene where the boys go on 48 hour pass, lose their virginity to a local part-time prostitute who works from home, and then go to a USO dance where Jerome falls in love with a girl for the first time. It is a wonderful contrast to see Jerome innocently falling in love with a Catholic school girl that he is having a slow dance with, while awkwardly trying to hide the fact that he has just lost his virginity moments before to a prostitute a few doors away.

It's not Neil Simon's greatest work by any means, in fact it's probably one of his worst. But then again it IS Neil Simon we are talking about, and even his worst work is pretty damned amusing. Overall I'd give the humour a six on a scale of ten, and the "aww isn't that cute" factor a nine. Be warned though, it is a cute movie, but it DOES contain a lot of blue language. The sex scenes are handled with discression.

The one-liners continue..
The "next" installment in the life of Eugene Morris Jerome is FINALLY here. The native New Yorker, Eugene is shipped out to boot camp during WWII and winds up deep in the South - Biloxi, Mississippi. His writer's "instict" kicks into full throttle as he negociates his way through all the physical and mental challenges boot camp offers. Far away from his hysterical family in Brighton Beach...Eugene is surrounded with an equally
dys-FUN-ctional crew of fellow privates. Neil Simon's clever dialogue and Matthew Broderick's phenomenal performance make this movie a great follow up to Brighton Beach Memoirs!