Jurácek's feature debut drew on his experiences in the Czech army; its good-natured depiction of a military filled with shirkers, dawdlers, and daydreamers represents a Czech New Wave homage to Jaroslav Hasek's antiauthority classic The Good Soldier Schweik. The film's first section concerns two soldiers, a young, handsome recruit and his swaggering, less attractive corporal, as they navigate a trip to the town's hospital and back, weaving through a virtual minefield of femininity along the way. (Look for playwright/future president Václav Havel as a soldier simultaneously hospitalized and smoking.) The second story follows a day of war maneuvers and the soldiers' inability to actually follow them, more concerned with picking apples, telling fortunes, or reading love letters. Virtually plotless, this ambling, affectionate film was, astonishingly, produced by the very institution it so effectively satirizes, the Czech Army, an only-in-Czechoslovakia fact that certainly seems unimaginable here.