Captain Yossarian (Alan Arkin) is a WWII bombardier desperate to quit the war by claiming to be crazy. However Dr. Daneeka explains that there is a catch-22. People who are willing to fly the risky life and death missions are crazy. He is bound to release crazy people as long as they make a request. However if they ask, then they don't want to fly and therefore by definition are not crazy. Colonel Cathcart (Martin Balsam) is the callous commander who keeps increasing the missions required to go home. Tappman (Anthony Perkins) is the incompetent Chaplain. Captain Major (Bob Newhart) is given the squadron command seeing that he's the only Major around except Major is just his name and not his rank. Dobbs (Martin Sheen) is the bomber pilot. Milo Minderbinder (Jon Voight) is using various items in convoluted trades with wide ranging places taking the silk parachutes from the planes.
This is very similar in tone with MASH. This is much more surreal. They're both anti-war black comedies. They both came out around the same time and of course, Catch-22 got crushed by the better MASH. The story feels like a bunch of disjointed skits. Some of it is hilarious. Alan Arkin is especially funny in his mania. Some of it is less funny. I would like a more straight forward story concentrating on fewer characters or maybe only Yossarian. I'm not a fan of the various 'dream' sequences since they usually stalls the movie. Later, it devolves into a series of Kafkaesque dream scenes. Most of it doesn't really work but it does recover somewhat.
This is very similar in tone with MASH. This is much more surreal. They're both anti-war black comedies. They both came out around the same time and of course, Catch-22 got crushed by the better MASH. The story feels like a bunch of disjointed skits. Some of it is hilarious. Alan Arkin is especially funny in his mania. Some of it is less funny. I would like a more straight forward story concentrating on fewer characters or maybe only Yossarian. I'm not a fan of the various 'dream' sequences since they usually stalls the movie. Later, it devolves into a series of Kafkaesque dream scenes. Most of it doesn't really work but it does recover somewhat.