
A bombardier in World War II tries desperately to escape the insanity of the war. However, sometimes insanity is the only sane way to cope with a crazy situation. Catch-22 is a parody of a "military mentality", and of a bureaucratic society in general.... (Full plot summary below)
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A bombardier in World War II tries desperately to escape the insanity of the war. However, sometimes insanity is the only sane way to cope with a crazy situation. Catch-22 is a parody of a "military mentality", and of a bureaucratic society in general.
Leave your thoughts about Catch-22.
| New TimesLuke Y. ThompsonStarts out pretty funny, gets incredibly weird by the end. |
| The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe most moving, the most intelligent, the most humane--oh, to hell with it!--it's the best American film I've seen this year. |
| eFilmCritic.comScott WeinbergCan't capture the brilliance of the source material ... but does a pretty good job all the same. |
| EmanuelLevy.ComEmanuel LevyReleased during the Vietnam War, the movie was a commercial failure, but seen from today's perspective, its black humor holds up well. |
| Entertainment WeeklyTroy PattersonThe director of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate is more at home with minute personal tensions than with the epic hysteria this project required, so file the film under botched masterpieces. |
| The A.V. ClubNathan RabinIt's a flawed film, hampered by weird tonal shifts and an overpopulated cast. But, 31 years later, Catch-22's chilliness seems forgivable, its vision of a military (and a nation) ruled by gung-ho capitalists, shameless opportunists, and evil yes-men as prescient and incisive as ever. |
| Tampa Bay TimesEric AtkinsNichols has done the same thing in Catch-22 that he did in The Graduate. He's given us a funny beginning, then switched tones and gone serious. And then tacked on a Great Escape ending which answers none of the questions he's so painfully raised. |
| Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertNichols has done the same thing in "Catch-22" that he did in "The Graduate." He's given us a funny beginning, then switched tones and gone serious. |
| Hollywood ReporterJohn MahoneyCynical and bitterly cold... [Mike] Nichols and [Buck] Henry fail to make an anti-capitalist film. They have made their case so strong that it becomes an anti-human film. |
| New York Magazine (Vulture)Judith CristThis film wants to be bleak, nihilistic, and darkly hilarious but Catch-22 emerges as an exercise in frustration for those unprepared for Nichols's episodic, detached, and surreal treatment of the novel. Like a nightmare, the film shifts from one bizarre episode to another, with Alan Arkin's dazed Yossarian reacting to the madness that surrounds him, but second only to the viewer. |