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5.8/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 5.8/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Fun in the Barracks remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you have a soft spot for 1930s French comedies and don't mind a movie that feels more like a loose collection of skits than a proper story, then yeah, go for it. It is perfect if you want something that doesn't demand you track a complex plot. But if you get annoyed by characters who just yell over each other for no reason, you are going to hate this. It’s loud. It’s chaotic. It barely makes sense half the time.
There is this one moment where someone is trying to clean their gear, and the sheer amount of bumbling that happens around him makes it look like a stage play gone wrong. It is messy. I loved it.
It’s funny how movies like this take such a rigid setting—the military—and decide that, actually, no one is doing any work at all. It’s just guys hanging out in bunks, smoking, and trying to pull one over on their officers. It’s got that specific energy you find in movies like The Hick where the conflict is usually just someone being a bit of a jerk.
The pacing is all over the place. One scene lasts for five minutes too long because someone is laughing, and I swear the audio track was just looped. But then, suddenly, a joke lands so well that you forget the pacing issues entirely.
There is a lot of yelling. Maybe too much? It reminded me a bit of the frantic energy in Watch Your Husbands, where the chaos is the whole point. You aren't meant to analyze the military hierarchy here. You’re just here to watch these guys trip over their own feet.
It is not a masterpiece. It is barely a movie, really. But there is something really honest about how bored these soldiers look. It feels like the actors were just as tired as the characters. Sometimes, that is exactly what you need on a rainy Tuesday.