Watch How I Won the War For Free

Truly Dreadful Film

As Good As It Gets

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I remember that when this film was released there was a great uproar at this attempt to satirise World War 2.Too many of the generation were still around and objected to the contents.I read the critics in the papers ,who all panned it,and so I did not go to see it.I have to say that I am pleased that I did not bother.I have just gotten around to watching it and all I can say is that it is an incoherent mess.Lester seems to try and continually go for cheap laughs,and the insertion of archive film from Dunkirk does nothing to help.It is probably the most unfunny and boring film that I have seen in a long time.So thankfully I saved my 6/- by not watching it at the local Odeon.

There is a reason for the old theatrical axiom that satire is what closes on Saturday night: satire by itself is just not very entertaining. It has to be funny, too. The target here is war, and just how silly men get when caught up in the middle of it, and this is pretty obvious by the five minute mark of the movie. The production looks very good, recreating the appearance of WWII's North African Theater quite well, but the key weakness is the central story conceit: that a unit of the British Army would be sent into a hellishly dangerous area to set up a cricket pitch. The idea must have had some appeal on paper to somebody, since the movie got the go-ahead, but unless it had actually been based on a true incident or something, the idea is just too obvious and far a reach to build a movie around, and the occasional shots at army tradition and military thinking (there's an oxymoron) just aren't funny enough to keep things interesting while the absurd story plays out. Michael Crawford, a brilliant comedian in other material such as Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, tries hard to keep an edge to his work, but the material for the large part just isn't there. John Lennon, for all that he is second billed, doesn't have much of a character or much screen time. He just pops up occasionally as a kind of PFC Greek Chorus to comment on the goings on. This would seem a good use of the eccentric and sardonic Lennon, but once again the problem is that he is simply not given much to work with. Richard Lester can be a funny and creative director, but here he isn't and as co-writer of the thing he should have realized that the material was lacking. He didn't. Not a terrible movie, but definitely lower echelon stuff. Catch-22 is a better and more ambitious movie, and so is Oh What a Lovely War.

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.

Many people hate this movie because of how absurd and hard to follow it is. Really, IMO, it isn't as hard to follow as many people say. The characters are very well developed. Michael Crawford plays the inept Lt. Goodbody and Beatle John Lennon plays a fascist thief named Gripweed. The story, however absurd it may be, is actually pretty interesting. Goodbody's troop must set up a cricket pitch in the middle of nowhere.I think it's actually a very good movie. I bought it only because it has John Lennon but I love it now for so many more reasons.