It’s Lieutenant Hurwitz. Severe shell-shock. Thinks he’s Ethel Merman.
You’ll be swell, you’ll be great. Gonna have the whole world on a plate. Startin’ here, startin’ now. Honey, everything’s coming up roses . . .
War is hell.
Well, there’s kind of no point. It holds up. It’s still hilarious. It’s a film with influences that continue to this day and it’s kind of like a more earnest Marx Brothers movie: if you have four jokes a minute, odds are one of them will be hilarious, but be sure and keep a straight face. And it is one of the most gut-bustingly funny movies ever. The cast is really brilliant, particularly the veteran character actors: Peter “grown man naked” Graves, Robert “sunglasses” Stack, Lloyd “sniffin’ glue” Bridges and, best of all, Leslie Nielsen who has a deadpan to die for: “What was it we had for dinner tonight?” “Well, we had a choice of steak or fish.” “Yes, yes, I remember, I had lasagna.” But I’m going to stop now because any attempt to talk about this movie just devolves into a litany of great lines and hilarious sight gags and brilliant bits. Surely you know what I mean. 4 stars.
tl;dr – anarchic comedy classic is still brilliant, astounding and hilarious; those deadpans are to die for. 4 stars.