The Best Film Adaptation of the Book Possible

Rating: 8/10 (19 January 2003)

The book Catch-22 is my favourite novel, and is extremely deep and intricate. It has great moments of comedy which slip quickly into tremendous moments of horror. That novel as it is could never feasibly be addapted into a live action anything.
However, upon viewing the film, I was quite impressed and happy with it. I'm not an unrealistic person, so I understand that they had to cut out scenes and characters and subplots to condense it for the film. Overall, of course, it lost some of its greatest moments which are in the ironic humor of the narrative style of the book. But it was not a bad film at all. In fact, I thought it was one of the best adaptations I have seen. I think almost everything you see on screen happens in the book.
Apart from that, it was extremely well casted. The characters were just as I have envisioned them in my head while reading the novel (except that Major Major shrank about a foot... but that's not matter, because Bob Newhart was great anyway). The cinematography was beautiful, the acting was awesome (Alan Arkin was perfect), and the flashbacks to Snowden were done stylishly and surrealistically.
Basically, it's a good movie. But it's an even better movie if you've read the book, and you know exactly what is going on in some of the characters' heads and what is going on outside of the scenes we see in the film. Overall, I think this is the best anyone could have done with this adaptation, and I applaud the filmmakers for that.