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Why all the heavy negativity about this silly movie? No, it's not Oscar material, but not every movie needs to be or is meant to be. Besides, comedies rarely win.

I don't usually like crude or vulgar humor, but I had to laugh at a lot in this flick. Yes, some of the "jokes" bomb, but there are a lot of good laughs, too. I think some people are uncomfortable laughing at a hefty, dense woman whose self-esteem may be a patchwork, but she's a good person. Maybe we see some of our selves in there, parts of our selves that we are not comfortable with.

I LOVED Susan Sarandon's performance. I seriously doubt she was looking for an Oscar here, or, as some have suggested, is desperate for any role she can get. I thought her character was a fun trip away from what we expect from a "grandma," and I think Sarandon played it well. In fact, I'd like to know this character if she really existed. She'd be a lot of fun and full of surprises.

It's not necessary to be shocked that some great actors had small roles here. It was a great idea, and you never know how a script, its actors, directors, producers, etc. will gel in the end.

It worked for me (for the most part.) It's one of the few movies I've paid to see at a cinema lately that didn't make me regret the expenditure.

I just don't see the value of the rantings about the misrepresentations of fact that may or may not occur in this movie. It is unquestionably a piece of propaganda of questionable quality and believability. There are parts that are comical if you have any sense of history. It is said that Soviet audiences themselves found it laughable, although one reviewer here of apparent Slavic origin seemed to like it. But whether you detest the use of propaganda or see it as a fact of life doesn't seem really relevant in rating the film. Not much to go on about, there either.

I don't see artistic value in it worthy of discussion.

I'm just curious as to why propaganda was thought necessary in 1942-43 (presumably it took some time to make the film - when was it conceived/begun?) by which time the U.S. was fully engaged in the war effort. Or has our overload of films from both the time of the film and since, which focus purely on WWII heroics, been a bit inaccurate? In the movie "The Best Years of Our Lives" there is one scene where a citizen criticizes the U.S. involvement in the war in the face of some returned veterans. Dana Andrews loses his cool and assaults the man for showing disrespect. Has our view of history glossed over the number of people who were not so supportive of the war effort, either as pacifists or isolationists? I don't know the answer, but if it was actually significant, that might explain the perceived need for this film. Or, were there really significant anti-Soviet rumblings in the U.S. populace at the time? Or was the influence of certain right wing politicians on public opinion feared? It is known that U.S. veterans who fought beside Russians spoke of the latter's bravery, loyalty, and moral quality, but this would have been mostly after-the-fact, so not pertinent to the possible notion that this propaganda was necessary to back the war effort at the time it was produced and released. If the film, as propaganda, bombed at the box office, why was that? There could be a number of reasons. For me, this is the one interesting thing that came out of watching the film.