Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

Starlift is a semi-fictional account of how entertaining the overseas American troops came to be… okay that was an ambiguous sentence. American oversea troops did not become entertaining. I mean to say Starlift is a semi-fictional account of how overseas American troops came to be entertained. Hmmm. They didn’t come to be entertained either. They came to fight. How can I say this… The American troops were overseas. Celebrities went to entertain them for a while. Starlift is the semi-fictional story of how that started happening. Nailed it!

Troop entertaining was nothing new of course. Troops have been entertaining themselves during wartime since Cain killed Abel. I believe the two had been playing Mario Kart when it happened. But as far as organizations like the USO involving actual celebrities to provide entertainment, supposedly that was a fresh hot idea during WWII.

According to this movie, it all started when one particular Private decided to go out of his way to meet his hometown sweetheart turned Hollywood starlet. Okay, so she was never aware she was his sweetheart. Okay, so she was not actually ever aware of him. Okay, her dad was his dentist. Anyway, he knew of her and one thing leads to another and next thing you know, Bob Hope is entertaining the troops, albeit not in this movie. I want to be perfectly clear. Bob Hope is not in this movie about an institution he was part of for like 40 years.

Everyone else is in this film though so long as they’re white. I already tore “Stand Up and Cheer!” a new butt for the poor treatment of Stepin Fetchit. At least this one didn’t have any one in it to mistreat. I guess that’s a plus. I guess.

The fictional parts were charming enough. As for the factual events, I can’t swear in a court of law if this film accurately portrays them or not. I even tried to research the subject before writing this article but it’s kind of an ethereal and intricate web of organizations and happenstance, none of which appears to be recorded in this specific copy of MAD magazine from which I siphon most of my research.

There were some humorous sketches throughout and a ton of stars of whom I recognized maybe 1%. I have no recollection of James Cagney or Gary Cooper even being in this, their cameos must have been while I was putting some pizza skins in the cooler. Okay I just recognized Phil Harris because he’s the voice of Baloo the Bear in Disney’s The Jungle Book, and Little John in Disney’s Robin Hood, and O’Malley the Alley Cat in Disney’s the Aristocats. It’s a good thing I recognized him too because the second half of the movie consists almost entirely of him losing a card game. Riveting. Okay, he was pretty funny but seriously, this is the movie?

I liked it though. The actual will they/won’t they plot was pretty good. It was enough to get me through the songs I wasn’t interested in sung by people I didn’t recognize as they flirted with people who weren’t me.