This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

That was an excellent one.

Excellent adaptation.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

War is the noblest of games, specially for the Queen's musketeers. Lt. Ernest Goodbody with his ready learned and endless banalities about duty, heroism and just about anything that comes to his mind is in his clumsy foolishness in a league of his own.Jokes come in such rapid fire that this war comedy has to be viewed several times in order to all of them be taken fully in. The pace of cutting, scenes and clever dialog is really fast. Dick Lester directs the story from mad screwball comedy to short moments of even madder reality -combat, wounding, deaths- and back again without losing any of the films evident power. The continuous use of different film techniques may strike some as tiring or pretentious. I liked the rich variation, because it just somehow fits so well and Lester is never in danger of loosing the scarlet thread of irony. Some of the best moments are sprung by satiric takes on war movies and documentaries. A mission for the crew involves them to build a cricket field in the desert to impress their officers. So, under burning sun the convoy duly drags along a field roller across the dunes while the soundtrack is blaring unmistakeably recognizable music from 'Lawrence of Arabia'. Some of the training sequences brought to mind bits from Laurel and Hardy comedies.At times situations begin to reach a point of surrealism. The soldiers already fallen in battle follow along the crew as ghosts of different colors. The oldest and most experienced man in the crew starts to dress and act like a circus clown. The changes and surprises just keep coming.Watching the scene where John Lennon as soldier Gripweed gets killed in a German field has now an enormous effect for reasons easy to understand. As he sits there bleeding, faces the camera and says something like "You know this would happen", it really makes an extra strong comment on violence now. Stronger than the writer, director or any other ever had in mind. For a thirty years old black comedy this movie still has an awful lot to say.

Take a movie like this. You may have heard somewhere that it was pretty bad. But, being an inquisitive sort, you visit IMDb first anyway. Here, you are greeted with plenty of reviews that tell you that it's not so bad - some even call it a masterpiece and a hidden gem.Then, you watch it and the cold hard reality hits you - it's just not that good of a movie. The first half an hour seemed to take about four. Yes, there are "innovative" aspects such as tinting people and scenes differently, but ultimately this is cheap and adds little.There are far better anti-war films of the same period. "How I Won the War" with a big star (Lennon) was made in 1967. Steve McQueen's "The Sand Pebbles" of 1966 is, although a much longer movie, an infinitely better anti-war film that managed to convey all of the same philosophical points as HIWtW (and more) and do it with subtlety, class, and genuine humanity.The saving grace of HIWtW should have been comedy - absurdist or otherwise. The ingredients were there - war and military life are just asking for the application of ironic and observationalist British wit. Alas, while the characters spend most of the time speaking in that fast British way as if they were saying something as clever as, say, Monty Python or Fawlty Towers, what they actually say is substantially less interesting. Pity.This film is not particularly worth watching.

This challenging film is in a class all of its own. It's as if Samuel Beckett had written a screenplay filling it with low slapstick and very smart commentary. Lester's ultimate point seems to be that war is merely just an extension of class war. Michael Crawford is excellent as the clueless, Bertie Woosteresque squad commander; always trying to piece things together with a seemingly high class education that does him absolutely no good in the thick of war's irrationality. The fast-paced gags come in rapid succession, punctuating each working class soldier's senseless death with great comic absurdity. And yet, armed with his upper class and horribly thoughtless "sacrifice for King and country" paradigm, Lt. Goodbody forges ahead on a completely senseless mission inadvertently causing the deaths of all of his men. It's perfect that in the end the only person he can relate to is his German upper-class captor. His ultimate "winning" of the war by simply purchasing the only bridge left crossing the Rhein (with a bad check, no less) is the perfect metaphor for the film's main idea; that it's not even money that separates the classes - it's just the collective illusion of the classes that separates them. And it's this illusion for which the working class are forced to fight and die.A fantastic piece of anti-war theatre.

I saw this film on FLIX today (20 March 2006) for the second time, and appreciated it a lot more than I did when I first saw this in Syracuse, NY around 1981 or so. Not only do I see a parody of war films (such as Lawrence of Arabia, whose theme is used), but it seems oddly appropriate for America in 2006. By that, not only do I refer to the war in Iraq, but also the corporate mentality that pervades many quarters.John Lennon does steal the movie! Indeed, he had a better chance than Elvis Presley did when it came to a movie career, but Mr. Lennon declined the chance to do so. The rest of the cast is fine, particularly Michael Crawford, Roy Kinnear and Alexander Knox as the US General. This is one brave and prophetic piece of film-making.