What’s Aged the Worst?
Voyeuristic treatment of women and the incoherent final third are the principal answers.
In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 00:46:21Read transcript
- The period’s routine use of nudity and men spying on women through binoculars or shower holes is said to play differently now.
- The final third abruptly crosses into Czechoslovakia, strands the unit, and sends four characters into a bloodless Soviet-base rescue.
- The Wisconsin exchange survives as a much-quoted line even though the surrounding rescue plot is judged a screenwriting disaster.
- The two military-police characters retain agency, but Stillman watching women shower is singled out as material that would not be made the same way now.
- The film is placed in an era when comedies could become incoherent and still succeed because jokes continued landing.
- The film’s obvious homophobia is explicitly added as material that aged poorly and described as a staple of the period.