Review: In Hulu’s 'Catch-22,' a fine reminder that the Greatest Generation also had its cynics
Christopher Abbott plays John Yossarian in Hulu’s adaptation of Joseph Heller’s novel “Catch-22.” By Hank Stuever Hank Stuever TV critic Email Bio Follow TV critic May 16 at 10:30 AM There were once 16 million Americans who fought and survived World War II; this year, the number of those veterans who are still alive will dip below 400,000; in five years, fewer than 100,000 will be left.
That’s part of the reason Hulu’s enjoyable and surprisingly poignant six-episode adaptation of Joseph Heller’s novel “Catch-22” is such a refreshing find: It’s nice to be reminded that, along with their heroism, the World War II generation possessed a healthy dose of cynicism, a distrust of power, a heightened sense of mischief, an insatiable horniness and a willingness, at times, to subvert the system to one’s benefit.
“Catch-22” was first published in 1961 and caught on with the nascent peace movement, hailed as a modern classic, and then assigned to high school and college students, who consider most reading assignments an infliction and therefore might have missed Heller’s finer points of satire.
Abbott excels at portraying Yossarian’s contrarian insouciance, beginning at a California training camp where he is having an affair with the wife of his ill-tempered, obsessive-compulsive training commander, Colonel Scheisskopf . Counting on the war being over before he can be assigned, Yossarian instead quickly finds himself in combat, riding in the claustrophobic glass-enclosed nose of a B-25 to line up targets while flak explodes all around him and the risk of death is high.
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