grantss WW2, the Mediterranean theatre. Captain Yossarian is the bombardier of a B-25 medium bomber. His squadron's missions largely involve bombing targets on the Italian mainland. A veteran of countless missions, he has become cynical about the war and pessimistic about his chances of surviving. He should have been rotated home a long time ago, but the Wing's Commanding Officer, Colonel Cathcart, keeps raising the number of missions required to rotate out. Yossarian hits upon a plan to get sent home. However, there's a catch.Great satire on the insanity and inanity of war, based on Joseph Heller's brilliant novel. Very funny, showing the silliness of bureaucracy, military rules and leadership and inept leadership in general. Over-the-top in its amping up and criticism of these structures. Some good general humour too.It's not all comedy though. Shows the consequences and casualties of the rules and ineptitude and does so quite dramatically.Great performances from an all-star cast. Alan Arkin is superb as Yossarian. Supporting cast are a who's who of the entertainment industry: Martin Balsam, Orson Welles, Bob Newhart, Anthony Perkins, Martin Sheen (in his third movie), Art Garfunkel, Jon Voight, Norman Fell, Bob Balaban.However, helps if you haven't read the book. I first watched this soon after having read the book and wasn't impressed. The novel is one of my favourite books of all time and the movie didn't capture what made the book so great - the clever, funny descriptions of situations. The movie tries to replicate these through visual gags and dialogue but, while these work fairly well, they don't quite have the impact. The movie suffers badly if compared directly to the book. Rewatching the movie now, more than 20 years since reading the book, I now appreciate how good the movie is in its own right.

martin-fennell Disappointing movie based on the hilarious anti war novel. It has some very funny moments, most of which occur in the first half.Considering the talents involved, it should have been a lot more entertaining. But mostly it crawls at a funeral pace and is rather dull. Still Arkin is perfect as Yossarian. For his performance alone, it's worth seeing at least once.

higherall7 Read the book twice and thoroughly enjoyed it. Saw the movie several times and even got stuck out in the suburbs the first time after seeing it twice and called up my High School Teacher and mentor Pierre Rener to come get me late after midnight hoping to brainstorm with him about it. I'll never forgot how he groaned over the phone, "Oh God! Oh God!". I was just a pimply faced teenager back then and only now as an older man do I realize how much I must have irritated the hell out of him.When I read it the first time I loved its wacky wit and snappy ending. Despite its length, for me it wasn't a hard read at all. I suppose nobody had to convince me that war was crazy as it was kind of self evident to me all along and I could kind of sense the comedic appeal of such an activity as a Theater of the Mind. The second time I brainstormed about this royally with Miss Gomez in her class 'INTRODUCTION TO THE NOVEL'. She was a die-hard Existentialist and used Sartre and Camus as a reference for her pontifications which were usually spot on. I can hear her now, "- every assertion implies a negation and every negation implies an assertion." A beautiful, philosophical woman she was and I learned a lot from her.All this is said to report that I saw only one way to film this thing with its myriad characters and stream of consciousness narrative moving faster than chain-lightning one-liners. I even wrote a paper about it for Miss Gomez's class where I diagrammed how the structure of the novel was very nearly a flashback within a flashback or more formally a series of chain reactions composed as flashbacks. This led Miss Gomez, God Bless her, to declare before the entire class, "Mister Boykin, you understand this novel better than I do!"Whether true or not, this is one of those stories that, like CHINATOWN, I seem to have a special affinity for because of my temperament and life experience. Paradoxes abound in Life as you surely know and - well, don't get me started about THAT. But the frenetic nature of Yossarian's mental climate as he gradually recovers from the gross traumatic incident that his mind keeps bouncing off because of the pain and horror contained therein is barely addressed or properly served in the film despite a stellar cast.This, however, is the heart and soul of the novel as it should have been with the film. The great humor of CATCH-22 comes from an inability to rationally confront and address the profound pain and horror of the wartime experience. It's this absurd dancing around the contours and the edges of something that's so abysmally hellish that gives the moral comedy of CATCH-22 its edge. Finally around Chapter Thirtynine an exhausted Yossarian realizes the dancing has to stop and he takes a walk through THE ETERNAL CITY to slow down the pace to something bordering on philosophical reflection. But even as he has slowed things down to a walk he observes that the absurdity around him continues on unabated with a will and a spirit of its own. This sense of being reluctantly forced to probe into the philosophical underpinnings of what war really is all about is remarkably absent from the film. It's a great show as was DOCTOR STRANGELOVE, but I always felt some special gravitas was missing despite the able efforts of Alan Arkin displaying all the various shades of moral outrage as Yossarian and Jon Voight offering shares for missing parachutes and chocolate covered cotton balls as 1st. Lt. Milo Minderbinder to keep his corporation afloat.The chocolate covered cotton balls are a great motif, by the way. How do you sell somebody something that nobody wants or needs and is near impossible to digest and besides offering you next to no nutrition doesn't do a damn bit of good for you? I know! We'll cover it with chocolate!The cast reads like a Who's - Who's from Saturday NIGHT LIVE and COMEDY CENTRAL. There is Richard Benjamin as Major Danby, Bob Newhart as Major Major Major, the great Orson Welles as Brigadier General Dreedle and Anthony Perkins as Chaplain Capt. A.T. Tappman. There is also Paula Prentiss as Nurse Duckett and the beautiful body of Olimpia Carlisi as Luciana for aesthetic and romantic diversion. There is even Art Garfunkel attempting to wax philosophical with a wizened old man who has seen this all a number of times before when the warriors came marching into the whorehouse.That being said, I always saw CATCH-22 as a faster paced film than this slow, ponderous elephantine thing Mike Nichols put upon the screen to convey some kind of epic movement and always sensed that the rhythms of CATCH-22 were more akin to Progressive Jazz than any type of reference to Classic Music. Just can't let go of the conviction that I could have penned a better screenplay than Buck Henry in this particular case. Although ALSO SPRACH ZARUTHUSTRA works very well when Luciana comes marching down the street.I also think one of my classmates was right about Omar Sharif. She thought it would have been interesting to see what kind of Yossarian he would have made.

g-bodyl Following along the lines of M.A.S.H and this film, Catch-22, both war movies from 1970, Hollywood was at the point where it began making anti-war movies following America's unpopular involvement in Vietnam. While M.A.SH was actually a rather fun movie following a second viewing, I really couldn't get on board with this film. Not to say it was a terrible film. But it just wasn't an appealing film, despite the pedigree of the cast and the director. There are some amusing moments for sure, but most of the comedy didn't register with me and the one word that comes to mind is blandness. Not bad nor good, but just mediocrely bland. I totally understand the themes of the movie and what the film is trying to say, so I do appreciate the film making it easy to apply its themes.Mike Nichol's film is about a military captain named Yossarian who had enough of fighting in the Mediterranean front during the second world war. Other that driving his fellow army members crazy, he decides to do anything possible to be labeled insane so he can be sent home and away from the war.One of the positive things about the film is the rather stacked cast. While I had script and direction issues, the cast was not the problem. Alan Arkin turns in a delightedly zany performance as Yossarian, and I can guess this is one of the films that put him on the map. Other stand out performances were Jon Voight's performance as one of the soldiers, who had a memorable scene near the end near the airfield. I also liked Orson Welles brief but formidable performance as the top general.Overall, Catch-22 doesn't live up to the promise I saw in it based on the pedigree. Keep in mind, this is only Nichol's second film after his promising 1967 debut, "The Graduate." He does get better with his future films. His direction was subpar and the writing was weak, but thankfully the cast saves the film from being a complete failure. I admit I had some laughs and was easily entertained by Alan Arkin. I do like the ideas the film suggests, but it should have been told in a better way. Oh well, not all films can be perfect ones.My Grade: C