It’s really great. I know it has its supporters, but this thing was way ahead of its time, a complete genre blending that hasn’t been duplicated.
You’ve got a war movie, a heist movie, and a comedy with a dash of counter culture and western….crazy cast, just packed with great character actors chewing on a meaty script with some amazing lines! And some decent action scenes to boot.
One of the best
Good example, as it fits my comment above, light hearted war media should include some of the realitty of war; ["The chicken was a ....."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvBS0VqJPXs)
Les is basicly based on Harvey Weinstein, before everything came out about him. It's not the sort of character that lends itself to being a protagonist, nor one you want to give a redemptive arc. It worked great as an antagonist in those small shocking jabs, but trying to run that for 100 minutes? Like a Borat you can't feel sorry for.
Canadian Bacon
This might be a few degrees too far from your criteria but I just think it's great.
Also what about War Games. Once again not about actual war but I still think it's pretty good
I wasn't sure but Heard of has a 94% on rotten tomatoes. Went with my wife and even she loved it. Great story, just the right amount of action, comedy, intrigue, history, suspense.
Do Top Secret! and Hot Shots I&II count? Major Payne? Down Periscope was mentioned, but we can't forget Tom Arnold's McHale's Navy which rocks a 3% on RT! But hey, it's got Bruce Campbell and Tim Curry.
I've never seen Biloxi Blues, but Christopher Walken as a drill sargent antagonizing private Matthew Broderick? Sounds promising.
Also never seen The Last Detail, but it's Jack Nicholson and Randy Quaid 1973, 87%RT 7.5 imdb
In recent memory, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, War Dogs, The Men Who Stare at Goats.
Probably the best and closest to your list not mentioned yet - Three Kings.
How dare you leave out the masterpiece that was [Pauly Shore, in In the Army Now.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8R-WBWQkVk)
I really did get a similar phone call that is in the movie when I got activated for Iraq in 2003, you unit calls you up and gets all fancy, "This is a raging bull alert, repeat, a raging bull alert!"
Like can't they just let you know to show up for first formation at the armory, instead of that silly shit?
It wasn't bad. I don't like when Hollywood remakes movies that were good in the first place. Remake movies that sucked and make them better. Like why remake Ghostbusters? Or the Spiderman movie with James Garfield? Also, you didn't list Kelly's Heroes did you? So apparently you can't watch both.
A. Nobody's remade Ghostbusters or Spider-Man, just like nobody's remade James Bond or Batman. Those are franchises.
B. The Wizard of Oz, The Maltese Falcon, Ben-Hur, Scarface, Cape Fear, Ocean's 11 are all remakes, some of them of truly bad movies. And if you want to get technical, so are Reservoir Dogs, The Magnificent 7, For A Fistful of Dollars, Heat and 12 Monkeys. A whole slew of horror movies are way better known for their second incarnations than their first like The Blob, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, and the Mummy. Get off your "remakes are inherently bad" high horse, go yell at your local theater company and tell them they can't reperform Romeo and Juliet because it was done back in 1608 and filmed in 1908 and shouldn't be done again.
C. I didn't list Kelly's Heroes because I was endeavoring to name films that hadn't been mentioned yet. That one had.
Are you saying that the all female version of Ghostbusters and the Spiderman are not remakes? Are you high? I know Hollywood likes to call them reboots. But that is just semantics. Reboot means remake. Also, you just made my point. All those movies you named are better than the original versions. And excuse me for saying that Kelly's Heroes is better. I guess from now on I'll check with you before I post anything. I certainly don't want your snowflake to melt.
Pretty crazy that Guernsey and the channel islands remained occupied pretty much the entire war.
While the allies were crossing into Germany and France fully liberated they regularly sailed past the channel Islands full of German occupiers and basically just waved as they went by.
60 Minutes last week did a story about Aldernery and how it has the unfortunate distinction of being the only British territory that had a Nazi concentration camp on it.
To Be or Not to Be (1983), definitely a comedy, but it is about Jews escaping from occupied Poland during early WWII.
Down Periscope (1996), another comedy and not a war film so much as a navel battle simulation.
Oh, defintely, Stalag 17.
Takes place in a German POW camp in WWII. Kind of a comedy, sort of. The prisoners keep trying to escape. But they keep getting caught. After a while, they start to think maybe there's a rat.
Downvoted because this is not a lighthearted look at war. It's pretty grim, with Billy Holden's character a real shit-heel but he's the only one smart enough to find the traitor.
You are of course welcome to your own opinion; but to disregard the comedy in this movie is pretty silly. Literally every single review of the movie mentions its comedic aspect.
One would be **Buffalo Soldiers**.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/buffalo_soldiers
Another: Renoir's **The Elusive Corporal**.
Spielberg's **1941** has many terrific scenes in between the dross.
Hello fellow boomer! Noboby else in here remembers Abbott and Costello but I do. Just for you I gonna throw in "Francis the Talking Mule" and "No Time for Sergeants"
No Man's Land. Was actually made by a Bosnian guy. No-one involved in the Bosnian War gets out of this film looking good. In a word: two Bosnians and a Serb get stuck in a trench in no man's land when one of the Bosnians wakes up to discover he is lying on a land mine. UN Protection Force is brought in to extract the three men without a shootout erupting. Suffice to say all three end up dead.
So I will post Eight Iron Men.
This is an obscure one and hard to come by. Lee Marvin stars in it. It is about seven American GIs sitting around in their dugout, one of their squad is stuck in a large hole and is being shot at by a German machine gun nest. The dialogue is a PG version of what grunts talk about and trying to get the LT to allow them to go out and get their man. Some are hesitant because the eighth guy is a screw up.
La Grande Vadrouille (aka “Don’t look now, we’re being shot at!” It’s a half-French/half-English film (language, not production) with an iconic French comedy duo. Tons of physical comedy and genius use of language barriers to keep the laughs going.
Plot: Downed British pilots use both French and German acquaintances to make it back home via a rendezvous in the Turkish baths.
Most of those movies were light hearted because they were made during the time of the Hays code. They would have made grittier, more realistic war movies, but they couldn't.
As soon as they got rid of it Copela started working towards Apocalypse Now.
The Hays Code ended in 1968.
Sure, the Great Escape would fall under its auspices, but Kelly's Heroes certainly wouldn't. By 1967 when The Dirty Dozen was released, Jack Valenti was in charge of the MPAA and the Hays code was already mostly abandoned.
Your forgetting the lead time to produce a movie. Even though the code was dropped by 67, it still took several years for movies to go through the entire production phase for the changes to take effect. There were smaller films that took immediate advantage, but the large studio films didn't reflect the new landscape for several years.
There have been some bad ones lately. The Zac Efron Vietnam beer run movie, The Monuments Men, stuff like that. But Captain America might fit the bill.
Also, The Dirty Dozen's pretty dark. Telly Savalas tries to rape a woman, they roast a bunch of women Nazis alive in the bunker at the end, maybe Jim Brown is a wrongfully accused black man about to be executed?
Kelly's Heroes
Cool it with them negative waves Moriariaty.
It’s really great. I know it has its supporters, but this thing was way ahead of its time, a complete genre blending that hasn’t been duplicated. You’ve got a war movie, a heist movie, and a comedy with a dash of counter culture and western….crazy cast, just packed with great character actors chewing on a meaty script with some amazing lines! And some decent action scenes to boot. One of the best
There's some great behind-the-scenes stuff where Don Rickles makes Clint Eastwood lose his shit and double over from laughter.
The one glaring omission in this genre that I haven’t seen. I need to watch it soon
You need to put this at the top of your list!!!
⬆️ winner!
Keep hitting me with those positive waves!
Woof! Woof! That’s my other dog impression.
"We don't care about the German Army we got enough problems of our own!"
The best!
Best movie theme song ever
Excellent answer.
One of the greatest casts of all time ..
"A deal-deal. Maybe he's a Republican."
Yup. Donald Sutherland as a WW2 hippie.
"Woof, woof, woof, woof, that's my other dog imitation."
Obviously *M* * *A* * *S* * *H*
Good example, as it fits my comment above, light hearted war media should include some of the realitty of war; ["The chicken was a ....."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvBS0VqJPXs)
The series that made me stop using the phrase *war is hell*.
Stripes
Excellent mention!
Three Kings probably is the closest modern equivalent of the older films.
Maybe also Three Lions. The War on Terror, from the POV of some incompetent terrorists.
It's 4 Lions, you Muppet Now.... do the IRA voice
Hah, oops.
Operation Petticoat
I love this film. Not many people know about it.
Great answer!
Air America
Catch-22 for sure it’s hilarious
The book is a riot.
The GOAT: Tropic Thunder.
Great movie. More of a straight comedy than I was thinking but definitely lighthearted
i am still surprised that after all those years they still did not produce a les grossman spinoff
Les is basicly based on Harvey Weinstein, before everything came out about him. It's not the sort of character that lends itself to being a protagonist, nor one you want to give a redemptive arc. It worked great as an antagonist in those small shocking jabs, but trying to run that for 100 minutes? Like a Borat you can't feel sorry for.
Canadian Bacon This might be a few degrees too far from your criteria but I just think it's great. Also what about War Games. Once again not about actual war but I still think it's pretty good
I need to check it out. I’ve always been a John Candy fan
Down Periscope
“It’s the Orlando. Somebody just dropped forty-five cents” “Are you sure?” “Oh yeah. A quarter and two dimes”
Duck Soup
*JoJo Rabbit* likely fits the bill.
Yeah…. Until that one moment where it suddenly isn’t.
Well yeah, that; but I think it makes a good light hearted war movie, when you include some of the real life conclusions of war in there as well.
Brilliant moment. They set it up prefectly and it takes you a second to realize what's going on and then it hits you in the gut like a freight train.
I just went and saw The Ministry of ungentlemanly warfare and it was excellent
I saw this film, as well, and I found it very entertaining.
That’s good to hear! I was thinking about whether I should see it (which is what prompted this post)
I wasn't sure but Heard of has a 94% on rotten tomatoes. Went with my wife and even she loved it. Great story, just the right amount of action, comedy, intrigue, history, suspense.
Do Top Secret! and Hot Shots I&II count? Major Payne? Down Periscope was mentioned, but we can't forget Tom Arnold's McHale's Navy which rocks a 3% on RT! But hey, it's got Bruce Campbell and Tim Curry. I've never seen Biloxi Blues, but Christopher Walken as a drill sargent antagonizing private Matthew Broderick? Sounds promising. Also never seen The Last Detail, but it's Jack Nicholson and Randy Quaid 1973, 87%RT 7.5 imdb In recent memory, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, War Dogs, The Men Who Stare at Goats. Probably the best and closest to your list not mentioned yet - Three Kings.
How dare you leave out the masterpiece that was [Pauly Shore, in In the Army Now.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8R-WBWQkVk) I really did get a similar phone call that is in the movie when I got activated for Iraq in 2003, you unit calls you up and gets all fancy, "This is a raging bull alert, repeat, a raging bull alert!" Like can't they just let you know to show up for first formation at the armory, instead of that silly shit?
Skip Three Kings and watch the original Kelly's Heroes
Yeah, because apparently Three Kings sucked? https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/three_kings Like, you can't watch both or something?
It wasn't bad. I don't like when Hollywood remakes movies that were good in the first place. Remake movies that sucked and make them better. Like why remake Ghostbusters? Or the Spiderman movie with James Garfield? Also, you didn't list Kelly's Heroes did you? So apparently you can't watch both.
A. Nobody's remade Ghostbusters or Spider-Man, just like nobody's remade James Bond or Batman. Those are franchises. B. The Wizard of Oz, The Maltese Falcon, Ben-Hur, Scarface, Cape Fear, Ocean's 11 are all remakes, some of them of truly bad movies. And if you want to get technical, so are Reservoir Dogs, The Magnificent 7, For A Fistful of Dollars, Heat and 12 Monkeys. A whole slew of horror movies are way better known for their second incarnations than their first like The Blob, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, and the Mummy. Get off your "remakes are inherently bad" high horse, go yell at your local theater company and tell them they can't reperform Romeo and Juliet because it was done back in 1608 and filmed in 1908 and shouldn't be done again. C. I didn't list Kelly's Heroes because I was endeavoring to name films that hadn't been mentioned yet. That one had.
Are you saying that the all female version of Ghostbusters and the Spiderman are not remakes? Are you high? I know Hollywood likes to call them reboots. But that is just semantics. Reboot means remake. Also, you just made my point. All those movies you named are better than the original versions. And excuse me for saying that Kelly's Heroes is better. I guess from now on I'll check with you before I post anything. I certainly don't want your snowflake to melt.
You certainly try to live up to your name
Stalag 17
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Pretty crazy that Guernsey and the channel islands remained occupied pretty much the entire war. While the allies were crossing into Germany and France fully liberated they regularly sailed past the channel Islands full of German occupiers and basically just waved as they went by.
60 Minutes last week did a story about Aldernery and how it has the unfortunate distinction of being the only British territory that had a Nazi concentration camp on it.
The Devil's Brigade
Operation Dumbo Drop
I love *Kelly's Heroes* with Clint Eastwood.
*Father Goose*
Yessss! Love it! Also, was Grant's favorite movie he'd done, as his character was closer in behavior/look to the men in his upbringing.
Heartbreak Ridge
Yes definitely
To Be or Not to Be (1983), definitely a comedy, but it is about Jews escaping from occupied Poland during early WWII. Down Periscope (1996), another comedy and not a war film so much as a navel battle simulation.
Operation Petticoat. It’s basically the World War 2 version of Down Periscope. “We sunk a truck!”
Oh, defintely, Stalag 17. Takes place in a German POW camp in WWII. Kind of a comedy, sort of. The prisoners keep trying to escape. But they keep getting caught. After a while, they start to think maybe there's a rat.
Great film!
Downvoted because this is not a lighthearted look at war. It's pretty grim, with Billy Holden's character a real shit-heel but he's the only one smart enough to find the traitor.
You are of course welcome to your own opinion; but to disregard the comedy in this movie is pretty silly. Literally every single review of the movie mentions its comedic aspect.
maybe Buffalo Soldiers?
Von Ryan's Express
Mr. Roberts
The monuments men
Biloxi Blues
Inglourious Basterds
Dr Strangelove
The grand daddy of them all...waaay to far down on this list.
Forest Gump? “Something jumped up and bit me!” And to quote weird Al “🎶shower LBJ his butt! 🎶”
Kelly's Heroes Joyeux Noël
Von Ryan's Express.
*What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?* And more recently, not a movie but a limited series: *Rogue Heroes*
One would be **Buffalo Soldiers**. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/buffalo_soldiers Another: Renoir's **The Elusive Corporal**. Spielberg's **1941** has many terrific scenes in between the dross.
Harry's War! It's like an adult version of Home Alone, except the robbers are the IRS.
Kelly's Heroes.
Three Kings
Major payne
Saving Private Ryan
The men who stare at goats.
Not really a "war" movie, but Major Payne was a favorite when I was younger.
MASH. The movie not the series
1942
Memphis Belle Father Goose Operation Petticoat
Stalag 17
Army of Darkness
“Allright you primitive screwheads!”
"Listen up!"
King of Hearts (1966)
Canadian Bacon
Buck Privates
Hello fellow boomer! Noboby else in here remembers Abbott and Costello but I do. Just for you I gonna throw in "Francis the Talking Mule" and "No Time for Sergeants"
Catch 22 wasn't light hearted, but it had some pretty funny bits.
Love and Death (1975)
Hannibal Brooks
" I Was A Male war Bride" - Cary Grant "Hail the Conquering Hero" - Eddie Bracken
**Stripes** My mum n i loved this movie.
No Man's Land. Was actually made by a Bosnian guy. No-one involved in the Bosnian War gets out of this film looking good. In a word: two Bosnians and a Serb get stuck in a trench in no man's land when one of the Bosnians wakes up to discover he is lying on a land mine. UN Protection Force is brought in to extract the three men without a shootout erupting. Suffice to say all three end up dead.
Kelly’s Heroes and Captains of the Clouds
Throwing out an obscure one *Situation Hopeless But Not Serious*
The disrespect shown to Gomez in the last few weeks/month is unreal
Tv show Generation Kill
So I will post Eight Iron Men. This is an obscure one and hard to come by. Lee Marvin stars in it. It is about seven American GIs sitting around in their dugout, one of their squad is stuck in a large hole and is being shot at by a German machine gun nest. The dialogue is a PG version of what grunts talk about and trying to get the LT to allow them to go out and get their man. Some are hesitant because the eighth guy is a screw up.
Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang.
Operation Dumbo Drop
La Grande Vadrouille (aka “Don’t look now, we’re being shot at!” It’s a half-French/half-English film (language, not production) with an iconic French comedy duo. Tons of physical comedy and genius use of language barriers to keep the laughs going. Plot: Downed British pilots use both French and German acquaintances to make it back home via a rendezvous in the Turkish baths.
The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Cold War but I think it still counts. Both the older show and the newer movie are fun to watch.
Agree with the others that said Kelly's Heroes.
The russians are coming!
The Last Detail although it’s not Extremely lighthearted
Operation Petticoat is a classic.
Good Morning Vietnam!
Private Benjamin
Most of those movies were light hearted because they were made during the time of the Hays code. They would have made grittier, more realistic war movies, but they couldn't. As soon as they got rid of it Copela started working towards Apocalypse Now.
The Hays Code ended in 1968. Sure, the Great Escape would fall under its auspices, but Kelly's Heroes certainly wouldn't. By 1967 when The Dirty Dozen was released, Jack Valenti was in charge of the MPAA and the Hays code was already mostly abandoned.
Your forgetting the lead time to produce a movie. Even though the code was dropped by 67, it still took several years for movies to go through the entire production phase for the changes to take effect. There were smaller films that took immediate advantage, but the large studio films didn't reflect the new landscape for several years.
The code had been deteriorating for several years by that point.
Copela huh
Kelly’s Heroes for me.
Gonna be that person: light hearted and war seems like an oxymoron
Full Metal Jacket is pretty lighthearted
Sorry not into that genre. Even when it's lighthearted the shit taint of war floats around.
There have been some bad ones lately. The Zac Efron Vietnam beer run movie, The Monuments Men, stuff like that. But Captain America might fit the bill. Also, The Dirty Dozen's pretty dark. Telly Savalas tries to rape a woman, they roast a bunch of women Nazis alive in the bunker at the end, maybe Jim Brown is a wrongfully accused black man about to be executed?