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From:Alan Arkin , Martin Balsam , Richard Benjamin , Art Garfunkel , Jack Gilford , Paramount , Mike Nichols ,
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#4347 |
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1 of 5 customers found the following review helpful:
 Read the book, but watch MASH, 2006-05-22
Based on a great book the movie was bad when it was first released and has managed to get worse with age. I watched it again recently after re-reading the book and Paul Fussell's personal history of his infantry experience. The book actually reflects reality far more than one would think, the movie is just boring and headache inducing. The book was a literary event of the 1960's, but the movie is just a mishmash of bad dream and war scenes that do nothing to make you abhor war, but everything to make you abhor the movie.
4 of 7 customers found the following review helpful:
 It's the Butt(ocks) of its own jokes, 2006-04-12
This movie has always had two or three of the hottest women's backsides shots this side of Mariylyn Monroe in Laurence Olivier's study. The sultry, hot, tightly-wrapped Olimpia Carlisi (with a visibly stirred Alan 'Yosarian' Arkin in apparent emphatic agreement)is in two of them and of course the tight uniformed Susanne Bennett in the well-known pre-mission briefing scene with Orson Welles.
But this movie has not worn well over the years. Much of it comes off now as typical, end of the 60s pseudo-experimental, college-film-school influenced, pretentious radical posturing.
The "Dream" sequences are examples of this, and themselves are boring. The movie is still sometimes funny, but the comic scenes, after one has outgrown the self-important parts of it, are found to be all stacked in the front of the movie. The movie gets more full of itself and less comic as it goes along.
The commentary audio track feature that is available on this edition, with Steve Soderberg and this movie's director, Mike Nichols, if listened to as an evaluation of these two personalities, leads one to believe that it should not be surprising that one of these guys would create such self-important pap and the other would just adore it and fawn all over the director. Soderberg sounds just like a typical West-Coast pretentiously cool psuedo-intellectual, while Nichols sounds like he's acting the role of an aging beatnik. Soderberg's comments almost always involve the cinematography, the staging of shots, etc. He never says anything about the acting nor the writing. He also just fawns pathetically over Nichols all the time. The only value of the commentary feature are the precious few anecdotes that Nichols volunteers (which Soderberg's questions did absolutely nothing at all to prompt) such as the amusing fact that the Roman traffic cop in the Carlisi summer dress strolling scene is none other than screenwriter Buck Henry.
Bottom line, it's only worth it for the bottoms!
1 of 3 customers found the following review helpful:
Did everyone know they were working on the same picture here?, 2006-03-26
Joseph Heller's `Catch 22' is one of my favorite works of fiction, one of the best anti-war books ever written. It's a funny, touching, brilliant novel that reveals better than any I've read the absurdities of war. I watched Mike Nichols' CATCH 22 many years ago, half of it, anyway, on broadcast television, and carried away a negative impression.
Well, I could have been wrong. Sometimes if we wait a decade or two that we hate changes into something good. Not with this one, though. Alan Arkin is still annoyingly affect-less as the main character, Yossarian, the bombardier who is driven crazy (or not, I guess) by the squadron commander's constant raising of the number of missions the men have to fly before they can be rotated out. If Arkin's deadpan approach keeps his character at a distance, Buck Henry's over-the-top take on the squadron's executive office isn't any more enjoybable. In between are a bunch of big stars are given a chance to ham it up for a scene or two to middling effect. Really, this movie felt more like it was a series of skits stitched together than a coherent movie. Looks good, though (great photography and set designs.)
It's been a few years since I've read Heller's book, and I have to admit that I found the movie's plot difficult to follow. There are an awful lot of flashbacks, repeated scenes and scene fragments, characters that do things that make sense if you read the book but simply seem eccentric in a movie that doesn't explain their significance. Kind of a bummer when one of your favorite books is made into one of your least favorite movies.
1 of 1 customers found the following review helpful:
 Flawed, Timeless and Very Funny!, 2006-03-16
I just wasn't sure if this film was going to amuse me like it did when I first saw it in the theatre. It'd been so long since I'd pulled my VHS copy off the shelf I just wasn't sure, I mean it's happened to me before on a couple of films.
Just seeing the cast again was almost worth the price of admission: Richard Benjamin, Alan Arkin, Bob Newhart, Jon Voight and Buck Henry. There are many more but if you're reading this review to decide on buying the movie then I'll spare you the others as half the fun of the movie is seeing these performers in this film. Now, there are so many quotable lines in this movie that I can't begin to list them.
Hey, the movie is flawed. In other words, no, it isn't perfect for some of the reasons stated in other reviews but the fact is any movie buff, or rabid fan of dark, dark comedy will appreciate and fully enjoy Catch 22 in its entirety.
"That's some catch that Catch 22."
The book is incredible, too. I originally read it in high school and loved it. Seeing the filmed version a few years later was just icing on the cake.
 Classic Comedy!!, 2006-02-17
As you always hear, this movie was not quite as funny as the book. But I still loved it; Alan Arkin is hillarious and his role as Yossarian was awesome. This movie is required for any serious comedy collection!
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