Popular reviews

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  Review by Tasha Robinson ★ 83

  Groundbreaking, era-defining, and culturally significant in its time. Also hateful, sexist, racist, and endlessly pleased with the protagonists for their bad-boy behavior of bullying the entire military (and especially, endlessly, women) and getting away with it. I hated the whole experience of watching this, in spite of the incredible cast, the haunting opening song, and the chance to see Robert Altman developing his voice. Roger Ebert's 1970 review said the film is "true to the unadmitted sadist in all of us… it is the flat-out, poker-faced hatred in MASH that makes it work. Most comedies want us to laugh at things that aren't really funny; in this one we laugh precisely because they're not funny." I just can't find the…

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  Review by Aaron ★★★★★ 16

  “I wonder how a degenerated person like that could have reached a position of responsibility in the Army Medical Corps!” “He was drafted.”

  To show it is to sell it. That’s the thrust of the oft-quoted notion, attributed to François Truffaut, that it’s nearly impossible to make an anti-war film. The depiction cannot help but ennoble and romanticize, even if the intent is to do anything but. The solution? Don’t show the war at all.

  Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H, which contains nary a battle scene, is as effectively unromantic a film as one could produce on the subject of war. The inhabitants of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital are raucous and witty, but they’re so very angry. They seethe at…

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  Review by Matt Singer ★★½

  1970s audiences were so dazzled by the formal innovations and the undeniably chummy vibe that they barely registered (or willfully overlooked) the grotesque sexism running through this film. The same exact story could serve as the basis for an exposé about rampant misogyny in the Army — but M*A*S*H is a raunchy comedy that treats unrepentant abusers as plucky, underdog heroes who are rightly sticking it to a priggish, pompous system. And then it ends with ... a wacky football game? Complete with slide whistle sound effects?!?

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  Review by Will Menaker ★★★★ 4

  I've said it before, and I'll say it again: many of my favorite movies are about how being in a war would be fun and cool.

  RIP Sally Kellerman, one of the greats, that sultry bitch with the fire in her eyes!

  Also shout out Odo as Dago Red.

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  Review by Sam Meltzer ★ 32

  The idea behind this is brilliant: showcasing what an anti-war film truly should be by not allowing the audience to watch any moment of battle. Characters, destructed from the war and together in a confined area that allows the audience to see what it does to a person from both a physical and mental standpoint. Nothing happens the entire time, and yes of course that’s the point but why would I enjoy a film in which I’m purposefully bored the entire time? A very minimal number of the jokes landed for me and I can’t say it’s a ‘horrible’ movie but it’s so inherently not my thing.

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★½ 2

  50/100

  Wrote a Scenic Routes column about my conflicted response, though it leans more heavily on a charitable reading of the characters' repugnant behavior than said response really warrants, because I want to give Altman the benefit of the doubt (and also because I didn't feel like wading through dozens of comments calling me a SJW, though I still got a few.) While I like MASH a bit more than I did when I first saw it (which would've been ca. 1989–91), its ugliness still often seems intrinsic rather than strategic. In particular, the film clearly despises Hot Lips, and not merely because she's a humorless authority figure; compare her literally shrieking confrontation with Col. Blake to Frank Burns' ostensible…

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  Review by amanda 💫 ★★★★ 2

  é primeira vez que vejo uma comédia em um ambiente de guerra (literalmente) e também e meu primeiro filme do Altman, confesso que ambos os dois me impressionaram, pensei que não iria gostar do humor em um ambiente como esse mas até que ele faz sentido, é tão divertido que tu esquece que eles estão realmente em guerra…

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  Review by Devon Seltzer ★ 6

  ***Continuing My Education: Lesson #43***

  Perhaps expectations played a big part in why I disliked MASH. I went into it expecting a fun war comedy with a healthy dose of political commentary. What I got instead was an unpleasant war film with an unhealthy dose of bigotry. The film chronicles the life and times of a medical unit during the Korean war, as they drink, play cards, screw around, and occasionally save some lives.

  I'm not blind, I know that director Robert Altman clearly had an agenda behind his film, however, I did find myself blinded to that agenda by all the muck burying it. The film is sickeningly misogynistic, homophobic, racist, and just outright vile in its treatment of…

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  Review by Wood ★★★

  I know my Dad used to watch this movie all the time but not much of it stuck with me. A couple years ago I was at Safeway in the frozen food section, I looked over beside me and Donald Sutherland was buying a frozen pizza while wearing a camo hat. I was going to yell out "Hawkeye!" but in the moment I couldn't remember what his characters name was. I ended up yelling out "Sparrow!" and he just sort of stared at me and slowly walked away.

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  Review by Jonathan White ★★★★ 9

  I’ve probably seen MASH more than any other Altman film ( well, maybe I’ve watch Popeye more, … don’t judge ). I never particularly loved it, but I always found it insightful and funny. I’d watch the series occasionally, but not with any regularity. Within the last while, my friend Steve re-watched it, and thinking back on it, suddenly something struck me. The way Hotlips was treated in the shower scene.

  I was kind of dreading that scene on this re-watch. Although MASH was Altman, writer Richard Hooker and screenwriter Ring Lardner’s screenplay, it’s widely known that most of it was improvisational, meaning that Altman was ultimately responsible for what was brought to screen. Famously, Altman said that he had…

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  Review by Ayo Edebiri 2

  hard to give this a score...

  so deeply of it's time....

  a lot of.....mean spirited, "edgy" things about it.....

  but the football game is really fun lmao

  I will always have the show XO

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  Review by claira curtis ★ 17

  “I wonder how a degenerated person like that could have reached a position of responsibility in the Army Medical Corp.” 

  No need to wonder, Major! The reason is white male privilege! 

  Nothing makes me more annoyed than watching women be repeatedly sexually humiliated whilst existing in a heavily patriarchal power structure. M*A*S*H* is repugnantly misogynistic in the most blatant of ways. Intentional misogyny within satire is still misogyny and it is so gross how often and in the cruelest of ways it is utilized for an attempt at comedy. And then there’s the homophobia and the racism. It all really triples down on its negative aspects. I am not starting off on a good foot with Robert Altman’s work but…