Did Hawkeye steal that jeep?

Rating: 10/10 (28 June 2006)

As a teacher of critical viewing of film, I ended this school year with a unit of films of social commentary and chose this film as the final installment for the course. To the kids, it was a revelation. None of them had ever imagined you could do such an anti war film with so much humor. At first they were having trouble following it because of the overlapping dialogue and because this generation is just not oriented to listening. Viewing it with captions helped and as soon as they got into the plot, they were hooked completely. They especially loved the fake suicide scene and found the singing of the song with such jaunty style while a man was supposedly killing himself, hilarious. But even though I've found modern day kids love to laugh and adore silly, they did get the deeper issues and many of them picked it for their favorite movie. The best comment I had was from a particularly astute sophomore who said that the comedy was just 'there'. It didn't have to be forced down your throat like comedies of today. After a year of teaching this course and finding out to my sadness that the modern teen has no taste, no background and very little sophistication when it comes to film, I feel that exposing them in an educational way to these movie classics not only enhances their appreciation of film, but of the world in general.