A silly, silly movie. I rented it based upon the rave reviews on this site, and only sat through until the end so I could add my own review. I love war movies, but this thing was a combination of "Hogan's Heroes" and "Gilligan's Island". I should have known by the goofy little theme song in the beginning that it was just a piece of Hollywood fluff, circa 1963. I find it truly hard to believe that others have rated it highly.
My main problem with the film is that everybody and everything is a Hollywood cliche or stereotype. The camp guards spend the movie ignorantly staring into space while the escape plan magically develops before them, and the Commandant is downright sympathetic to the plight of his prisoners. And why were they trying to escape, anyways? I lost track of the number of scenes showing clean, healthy, well fed, well groomed "prisoners" sitting around smoking pipes in their sweaters, fer cryin' out loud! And the camp itself looked like an upscale hunting lodge during a comfortable summer. Imagine a 3 hour Nazi prison movie without one single unpleasant scene! This movie is nothing less than an insult to anyone that managed to survive a Nazi camp, and the millions that didn't. Heck, I look worse after a good night's sleep than these "prisoners" did after 20 days in solitary. I always wondered where the idea came from to make a TV sit-com about a WWII German P.O.W. camp (Hogan's Heroes). After seeing this completely unbelievable waste of time I now know. If you want a good WWII movie rent "Patton" or "Saving Private Ryan". This thing is just a bad comedy. I would give it a "3" out of "10". Maybe they should have added a laugh track.
My main problem with the film is that everybody and everything is a Hollywood cliche or stereotype. The camp guards spend the movie ignorantly staring into space while the escape plan magically develops before them, and the Commandant is downright sympathetic to the plight of his prisoners. And why were they trying to escape, anyways? I lost track of the number of scenes showing clean, healthy, well fed, well groomed "prisoners" sitting around smoking pipes in their sweaters, fer cryin' out loud! And the camp itself looked like an upscale hunting lodge during a comfortable summer. Imagine a 3 hour Nazi prison movie without one single unpleasant scene! This movie is nothing less than an insult to anyone that managed to survive a Nazi camp, and the millions that didn't. Heck, I look worse after a good night's sleep than these "prisoners" did after 20 days in solitary. I always wondered where the idea came from to make a TV sit-com about a WWII German P.O.W. camp (Hogan's Heroes). After seeing this completely unbelievable waste of time I now know. If you want a good WWII movie rent "Patton" or "Saving Private Ryan". This thing is just a bad comedy. I would give it a "3" out of "10". Maybe they should have added a laugh track.