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.

I suspect that if Robert Altman's ground breaking M.A.S.H. had not come out the same year, Catch-22 might have lived on as the Vietnam era satirical anti-war film. I'm glad M.A.S.H. did come along because this film was dribble. I think Mike Nichols ego got the better of him, having come off two hits (Graduate and ...Virginia Woolf), and the film suffers for this. He took a seminal postmodern work and destroyed it, the viewer forced to watch this disaster at twenty four frames a second.All Nichols had to do was pull a John Houston. For years many filmmakers tried to make the Maltese Falcon, but they deviated from the novel, and the films were awful. Nichols just needed to put the book in script form, and then chop off some of the fat in the editing room. Instead we are forced to watch this mangled train wreck. There are a few good moments, the Snowden scene cut up and running through the film was a very nice touch. The casting was good for the most part, but we didn't have enough time with each character to really get to know them, to care about them, to hate them. Believing Art Garfunkel as Natley the rich New Englander is beyond the talent and abilities of Mr. Garfunkel, and insulting to actors and New Englanders everywhere. Jon Voight was absolutely wrong for Milo, the whimsical pseudo-communist capitalist running an empire of trades and deals. The role demanded someone with a bit of the shady New York about him, not Mid-western Nordicism. So many little tidbits are missing, and Catch-22 is story about little tidbits, little stories that all weave together to form a rich tapestry of life. Major Major Major Major came and went like a flash, no mention of Washington Irving. I was hoping that they could have cast Peter Fonda, and played up the Henry Fonda resemblance more. Nor a hint of the CID men who came to interview him.One of the most critical, and humorous scenes in the novel is the interrogation of Clevinger. It was one of the funniest things I've read in a novel, and it surmises the absurdity of the chain of command, and war in general. I was on the edge of my seat waiting for this pivotal scene that never came. General Scheisskopf is also absent, along with his parades, and masochistic wife. I saw Doc Daneeka as the guy who tells really dirty jokes when no one is looking, an edge to the man, a cunningness, a shifty opportunistic abortionist, and as good as Jack Gilford is, he's not that guy. The list continues on and on. Arkin was somewhat of a saving grace for this picture; he was cast accordingly, and did the best he could amongst the visceral carnage laid out on celluloid. The subtle allegories to heaven were also a little hackneyed. True one reading from this novel that some of it happened in a death dream state, a blur between life, death, reality and unreality. It would have come off much stronger to play it straight, Bea Arthur straight, and punched the jokes in strong. It's the contrast of order versus dis-order that make Catch-22 so endearing. That military men act illogically in logical situations, and logically in illogical situations. When translating a dialogue rich novel such as Catch-22, it's usually best to stick with the story in the novel. It would be wonderful is someone down the road dusted off a copy of this fine work of post war literature, wrote it out in script form, and shot it. The whimsical, satirical, nonsensical, non-linear structure might play better with cinema trappings of early 21st century cinema; Post- Tarantino, Chapter 1, The Texan, and so forth. Until then we're left with this dud.

I could never really quite get into MASH and that baseball game is wasted on me. Mike Nicol's Catch 22, though, that's different. It's instant. Straight away it just clicks as being a film that is warped enough to be well outside anybody's box. I know that MASH is Vietnam and this an Italian airbase somewhere in the Med in WW2, but from here-on in, there are big similarities.Alan Arkin has never been better and though I haven't read the book and probably never will, you can tell straight away that he was born for the role. His only other performance that comes near was his Oscar winning one as grumpy old uncle in Little Miss Sunshine. As the US air-force captain hell-bent on proving his insanity, Capt Yossarian has to try and convince everybody, especially himself.The film is on so many delicious levels that it can be seen many times and a different stance or joke is revealed that you didn't see before. I'm on my third. Dreams, nightmares, psychosis, nudity, superb, adventurous cinematography AND Orson Welles, that's one helluva combination. The stunts are worthy of expensive 'proper' war films and it must have been a very brave film for Nicols to even contemplate making.There's one hell of a cast too, aside of Arkin and Welles - Anthony Perkins, Richard Benjamin, Art Garfunkel, Martin Balsam, Jon Voight and Martin Sheen - that's an invite list to the Oscars!My policy with such off the wall movies is not to try and understand them, unless it comes to me. Logic and reasoning can be an awful barrier to enjoyment, sometimes! For this reason alone, I'm not even going to try to explain the plot here.You'll want to watch Catch 22 for its WW2 satire, the imaginative direction, the well executed stunts and maybe above all these, the cast - and the humour that is so unreal, it's almost happening outside of one's mind and body.

Despite it's 42 years since initial release, still one of the best films ever made and directed about the insanity of 'creating' war - and the mindlessness and trauma suffered from its consequences of both those conscripted to engage in it and neither more nor less than the civilian victims of it's long-time aftermaths. Warfare's far-reaching ramifications touch us, individually and globally, even into the 21st Century and beyond. Being philosophically cogent of war's deep-seated egoistic, bizarre and greedy nature of those who foment it may not get you a Pulitzer, but perhaps you may garner a 'Catch 22' medal from those of us who've managed to live through them. Mike Nichols et al, within this film, remind us of war's senselessness and of it's bitter and long-effected remains. Superb, finely crafted, and in my sense, a must-see for 2nd and 3rd generation adults.