Some 12 years after The Rose, her breakout role as a charismatic Janis Joplin-like rock singer drinking and drugging herself into oblivion, Bette Midler is once again back on stage but the milieu couldn't be more different. Written by Marshall Brickman, Neal Jimenez and Lindy Laub, and directed by Rose's Mark Rydell, For The Boys posits Midler and James Caan as a song and dance duo whose success at entertaining troops during WWII segues into a 50-year musical career performing for the armed services in subsequent theatres of conflict like Korea and Vietnam. Unfolding through a series flashbacks narrated by a make-up-aged Midler attending a reunion, Rydell leaves no cliche unturned as he chaperones his two bickering stars through a largely conventional assembly of familiar love-hate confrontations conspicuous in their emotional shortcomings. Insofar as the film lives at all, it's in Midler's occasionally rousing stage numbers, particularly a moving rendition of The Beatles' In My Life. Other pleasures are far and few between and at 145 minutes, it's a long haul.
