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Too much of everything

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Taking this film as it is there's lots of fun to be had. It makes for a smooth viewing, a wild ride full of bumps on the road and unexpected developments. Whether you're particularly a fan of either lead doesn't make a difference here as it's a very solidly crafted film, with excellent pace and good dialog. It avoids being completely ridiculous as many such films do in an attempt to produce base humor for the masses, and despite being obviously on the parody side of things maintains a balanced compromise between emphatic comedy and story telling. The jokes find fit into the scenes, rather than pushing so hard as to leaking out of the plot.Of course it has to be mentioned the film takes advantage of the world war context to take a good crack at various clichés and make fun of the English, the Germans as well as the French themselves, and it's done pretty accurately with, again, a balanced effort.It's perhaps a little long for its own good, surpassing the two hour format which surely can constitute a flaw in the sense that: this is a lighthearted comedy, not to be taken seriously at any one possible point, and the goal being straight up having fun one doesn't so much care about the characters really or what happens to them as the thin tone of the film doesn't allow for it. The result of this is the ending tends to be a little overworked and spread on too long a final act where we all understand the main characters will get out alright and it's just a matter of how the film chooses it, like the viewer can feel like he's had his fun and "get on with the happy ending already". Two hours plus is a bit too much...7.5/10. A French comedy classic.

Comedies age. All things age actually, films included, comedies included. Seeing 50 years later a film that you remember having laughed at until falling under the chair (this is a Romanian expression, I hope it's clear what it means) is risky. The experience was interesting and surely much different.Filmed in 1966, a little more than 20 years after the end of WWII, Gérard Oury's La Grande Vadrouille represents a certain step in the evolution of the French (and not only French) films about the war that devastated Europe and the whole world. Taking distance and starting to allow ridicule replace at least in part hate and contempt for the German former enemies was not a completely new thing, I can remember Christian-Jaque's Babette Goes to War which preceded it with seven years. Yet, in this story about three British airmen parachuted in occupied Paris and saved by a band of French civilians including a famous music conductor (Louis de Funès), a humble paint-man (Bourvil) and a blue-eyed blonde puppeteer (Marie Dubois) the enemies are still all bad and stupid. It will take a time for the 'good German' to show up in war movies and even more time for the cinematographic acknowledgment of the collaboration with the occupiers. Meantime all French are good guys. Or good girls. Or good nuns.The film enjoyed huge success, it was actually from its release until 2008 the most successful French film of all times. I remember having seen it in the late 60s in Romania, and I read about film fans from China for example enjoying it as a huge success after the end of the Cultural Revolution. To a large extent the success is due to the presence on screen of the two greatest comedy actors of the French cinema at that time - Louis de Funès and Bourvil. Both were huge stars and Gérard Oury had brought them together on screen in a previous film, and now wrote the scenario of La Grande Vadrouille especially for them. Most of the time they are together on screen and the comic qualities of the two enhance each other, the chemistry between them is obvious and so is the pleasure of acting. Years have passed and I did not fall under the chair any longer, laughs turned into smiles and nostalgia, and I can also see the naivety of the script and the schematic story line - but it's certainly mostly me. The two are again together in my mind, at least for the next 50 years.

During World War II, two French civilians and a downed British Bomber Crew set out from Paris to cross the demarcation line between Nazi-occupied Northern France and the South. From there they will be able to to escape to England. First, they must avoid German troops - and the consequences of their own blunders.I have to give credit to France. I would think that 20 years after being occupied by Germany, it might not be something you would crack jokes about. Surely, many citizens would still have awful memories of the time. And yet, this film exists and was allegedly the highest-grossing film in France for a long, long time.And, you know what? It is pretty darn funny. It's sort of a like a French version of Monty Python or something Peter Sellars would do. Which works quite well.

This film is associated to personal memories of holidays with family. My father used to take me with him to watch war films in the 1960s, and this film starts as if it is yet another serious war film. However, this lasts only one or two minutes, and the rest is a fantastic series of good quality gags that strike a perfect balance between the humour of its fable and the fearsome echo of the disastrous war.I particularly enjoyed seeing the effect of this on my father, who I have rarely seen enjoying himself as much as when he was watching "tre uomini in fuga" (the Italian title). We used to see a film or two per summer with many friends, and we went to see this in at least 3 or 4 years as this was the best of all the films we saw in those years.