MASH

I think you had to be there for this one. It is very aged, but it was amusing and clever in spots.

Don't know if it was trying to be funny or serious. Kinda failed at both. Would have been a lower rating except Robert Duvall was awesome!

I like it better than the TV show--there, I said it. It's one of those films you have to pay reallly close attention to, otherwise you end up losing something. Pieces of seemingly random dialogue over certain shots really aren't so random. It's just genius.

Subversive. Groundbreaking. Created the "Animal House" - us against them - genre and nobody's even noticed. I need a black capsule.

Great! I saw it hundred times, and I can watch it any time, any place. You can watch film by parts if U like or You can watch it reverse.

Cuts across 40 years and the intervening wars like they're nothing. The humor is crude and cruel and entirely fitting of a picture that leaves the front lines to climax with the absurd bloodbath of a wagered company football game. The ensemble, an existing theater troupe, revolves around magnetic libertines Sutherland and Gould with expert improv. Altman fights tooth and nail in refusing to let the comedy overpower the underlying moral murk and human cost of the Korean War (aka Vietnam). Bold.

If only the tv show could have had this level of cynicism and truth.

Finely-constructed set pieces and sharp performances do not cover over a sophomoric and crass screenplay. The ambiguity about what MASH is--war film, black comedy, sex farce, gentleman's magazine humor story--ends up being both a strength and its greatest weakness. Altman and company create characters coming to grips with the insanity of war who seemingly use it as an excuse to continue to live out their college bacchanalia. Good film to see Altman define himself. Cringe-worthy at times.

You see Altman and a Palme d'Or and you go in thinking you'll see a cracker... and what follows is an arcless blur of mostly peurile hijinks, what would happen if you put Steve Stiffler and Jonny Knoxville amidst the gritty gore of war. I did laugh a few times, especially at the tannoy. But while this movie may have been important and groundbreaking in 1970, it's aged as well as a lettuce and pales in comparison to Sutherland's other war film from 1970, Kelly's Heroes.