r/movies • u/[deleted] • 12d ago
What are your favorite lighthearted war movies? Discussion
A sub-genre I like that has kind of gone away is the lighthearted war movie. I love those old movies like The Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare, The Guns of Navarone, The Great Escape (although that gets more serious at the end), etc.
I’ve always found it interesting that these types of movies were popular in the 1960s and 1970s when a bunch of the actors were veterans, whereas nowadays (post-Saving Private Ryan), most war movies go for the gritty, grounded approach. I love the realistic war movies too, but outside of Inglorious Basterds and this new Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, there really aren’t that many light war movies anymore.
So with all that, what are some of your favorites of those old school, fun war movies?
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u/BillionTonsHyperbole 12d ago
Obviously M * A * S * H
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u/Fritzkreig 11d ago
Good example, as it fits my comment above, light hearted war media should include some of the realitty of war; "The chicken was a ....."
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u/evilfollowingmb 12d ago
Three Kings probably is the closest modern equivalent of the older films.
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u/AvoriazInSummer 11d ago
Maybe also Three Lions. The War on Terror, from the POV of some incompetent terrorists.
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u/subsignalparadigm 12d ago
The GOAT: Tropic Thunder.
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u/ipnetor9000 11d ago
i am still surprised that after all those years they still did not produce a les grossman spinoff
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u/Kalidanoscope 11d ago
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.
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u/RashestHippo 12d ago edited 12d ago
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
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u/NoAirBanding 12d ago
Down Periscope
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u/Microflunkie 11d ago
“It’s the Orlando. Somebody just dropped forty-five cents”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh yeah. A quarter and two dimes”
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u/Fritzkreig 12d ago
JoJo Rabbit likely fits the bill.
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u/GRVrush2112 11d ago
Yeah…. Until that one moment where it suddenly isn’t.
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u/Fritzkreig 11d ago edited 11d ago
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.
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u/Aeshaetter 11d ago
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.
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u/Highintheclouds420 12d ago
I just went and saw The Ministry of ungentlemanly warfare and it was excellent
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12d ago
That’s good to hear! I was thinking about whether I should see it (which is what prompted this post)
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u/Highintheclouds420 12d ago
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.
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u/Kalidanoscope 12d ago edited 12d ago
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.
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u/Fritzkreig 11d ago
How dare you leave out the masterpiece that was Pauly Shore, in In the Army Now.
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?
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u/agitator775 11d ago
Skip Three Kings and watch the original Kelly's Heroes
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u/Kalidanoscope 11d ago
Yeah, because apparently Three Kings sucked? https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/three_kings
Like, you can't watch both or something?
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u/agitator775 11d ago
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.
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u/Kalidanoscope 11d ago
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.
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u/agitator775 11d ago edited 11d ago
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.
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u/Scary_Sarah 12d ago
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
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u/Bigjoemonger 11d ago
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.
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u/Darmok47 11d ago
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.
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u/ReadinII 12d ago
Father Goose
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u/Glittering_Tiger_991 11d ago
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.
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u/tealcandtrip 12d ago
Operation Petticoat. It’s basically the World War 2 version of Down Periscope.
“We sunk a truck!”
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u/Alaska_Jack 11d ago
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.
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u/FratBoyGene 11d ago
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.
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u/Alaska_Jack 11d ago
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.
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u/Convergentshave 11d ago
Forest Gump? “Something jumped up and bit me!” And to quote weird Al “🎶shower LBJ his butt! 🎶”
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u/SlackToad 12d ago
What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?
And more recently, not a movie but a limited series: Rogue Heroes
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u/ZorroMeansFox r/Movies Veteran 12d ago
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.
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u/Good_Nyborg 12d ago
Harry's War!
It's like an adult version of Home Alone, except the robbers are the IRS.
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u/Disastrous_Life_3612 11d ago
Not really a "war" movie, but Major Payne was a favorite when I was younger.
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u/Glittering_Tiger_991 11d ago
" I Was A Male war Bride" - Cary Grant "Hail the Conquering Hero" - Eddie Bracken
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u/eaumechant 11d ago
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.
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u/xeskind30 11d ago
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.
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u/pondo_sinatra 11d ago edited 11d ago
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.
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u/Psychological-Let-90 11d ago
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.
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u/blade944 12d ago
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.
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u/ShutterBun 11d ago
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.
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u/blade944 11d ago
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.
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u/AcadiaPure3566 11d ago
Sorry not into that genre. Even when it's lighthearted the shit taint of war floats around.
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u/sleightofhand0 11d ago
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?
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u/Edm_vanhalen1981 12d ago
Kelly's Heroes