The Choirboys

There's a saying that the best comedy comes from true life and there certainly is true life on display here but the problem is Altman. Just as the TV show MASH was superior to the movie, in this case the black comedy is there-and there are a few laughs but not nearly enough-because Altman doesn't know how to handle this material. What does capture is the dark humor that the cops use to survive end it captures some of the nature of what cops experience. The problem is I think it takes to too far. There's an incredible cast here though with some familiar faces who weren't notice the time but became quite famous later. For that alone it's interesting especially coming three years before Hill Street Blues a much better realistic portrayal of cops. I don't think this movie deserves all the ire of the reviews but I do think there are better adaptations Wambaugh.

I wish they still made movies like this. By that I mean one that has some sympathy for the adult male of the species.

This group of cops is varied in their attitudes , some bigoted, some liberal, some in the middle; just like civilians and real cops. The first part of the movie shows a lot of vice work and dated but funny comic routines, at a time when a single mother and a baby were not always inserted into every story. These cops go about arresting gays and prostitutes before laws and attitudes had changed.

The film was made in 1977, and for those too young to have lived it I am sure there are many cringe inducing scenes. One important and anachronistic episode shows an S&M hooker being caught physically abusing one of the police officer friends. The cops friend handles the hooker roughly , mad that she hurt his friend, and warns her to get lost.

If this film were made today, the hooker would be a single mother with a heart of gold, and the cop would be sneered at for being in this position to begin with. It was refreshing to see a movie with some sympathy for an adult male character, before the Hollywood mantra became "women can do whatever they want, men don't matter." Later in the film one of the cops with PTSD gets himself in trouble when he over reacts, and his friends try to cover for him. I have seen some younger viewers write that they were offended by the blue code of silence. I wonder if they would have been as offended if the perpetrator were a single mother and the victim was a man. I doubt it.

This is not a bad adaptation of Wambaughs book until the end. For some reason someone decided the movie needed an up-beat ending and blew the black ending of the book.

This is a movie searching for an audience. Best bet would be the "National Lampoon" crowd. Essentially "The Choirboys" has no plot, and really is nothing more than a series of mostly tasteless skits strung together with the very thin thread of policemen pulling numerous pranks. Nevertheless, some of the nonsense is very funny. You also have a terrific cast pulling off this stuff. To say that the film is different than the usual buddy cop movies would be a real understatement. Think "Animal House" without the fraternity, but with cops behaving badly. Definitely not an endorsement for political correctness, but a throwback to a time when one didn't have to weigh every word for fear of offending someone. - MERK

I was a cop with about 10 years on the street when I read Wambaugh's book, and figured the movie would be terrible. I thought Altman and his crew caught both the flavor of the book and of life on the mean streets of LA dead on.

Maybe you had to have been there. I was a great Hill Street fan (still am), but it was sanitized for TV, and much less like the real thing because of needing to maintain a plot line. Life ain't like that, and neither was The Choir Boys.

Cop humor is hard to fathom for outsiders. Cops are, in fact, a minority group anthropologically, meeting all the same criteria. Life out there doesn't go from A to B to C. It's chaotic. So was the movie, a little. Good job of catching the feeling.