The fact that [it] isn't very funny and, like its 80-year-old heroic, long outlives its necessary life, is less important than the fact that the characters frequently react gently or like credible human beings to the script's impossible notions.

Simpleminded, but it's fairly inoffensive, at least until Ashby lingers over the concentration-camp serial number tattooed on Gordon's arm. Some things are beyond the reach of whimsy.

It is most successful when it keeps to the tone of an insane fairystory set up at the beginning of the movie.

The picture is anti-war, anti-repression, and full of fun; a charming hour and a half of black humor.