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…

“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…

50/100

[original, un-"neutered" one-sheet]

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…

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…

i told myself i'd watch objectively this time, but...i just can't. for a many-month period of my life i watched MASH every night, on a 10" tv/vcr combo that i kept right next to my bed. i'm not sure if it was the color palette that soothed me, or if i just wanted Hawkeye & Trapper to escort me to my dreams, but this film has always been like a warm hug for my eyes. maybe it's creepy to find such a morbid and emotional comedy so comforting, but there's something about that special Altman ambling charm that lulls me into a smiling hypnosis. lots of the jokes are laugh-out-loud, but mostly they just make me feel good inside. every introduction…

Part of: Mystery March Challenge
Film recommended by: Adam Roubitchek

This isn't a hospital! It's an insane asylum, and it's your fault!
-Hotlips O'Houlihan

Ring Lardner Jr., who was just coming off being blacklisted as part of the Hollywood Ten, wrote a screenplay adaptation of the novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors. 15 directors would pass on it before Robert Altman got his hands on it and, much to Lardner's chagrin, made it his own. Using the script as an outline, Altman freely changed scenes and encouraged his actors to ad-lib the dialogue but still gave sole credit to Lardner for the script.

MASH, taking place during the Korean War, is actually thinly veiled commentary on the Vietnam…

From the early 1970s to the early 1980s, "M*A*S*H" was one of the biggest television events ever to be shown on broadcast network. It followed a team of doctors stationed in South Korea during the war, and is still today one of the most beloved TV series' ever made. The overall idea of the series was based on a novel from 1968, but the specifics of the show was actually based on a film from 1970, which less people know about. It was helmed by Robert Altman, the genius behind films like "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" and "Nashville," who wasn't a big name at the time, but gained a lot of attention due to his work on this film. When he…

I don’t think I’ll ever love M*A*S*H but I’m glad to say that I have a newfound appreciation for it. I'm so put off by its chauvinistic, boys' club humor. Repulsive as their behavior may be, it makes perfect sense in the face of such a brutal environment. How else is one supposed to cope when their daily lives revolve around death and the looming existential threat of war? For surgeons Hawkeye (Donald Sutherland) and Trapper John (Elliott Gould), it’s by indulging in every form of drug, drink, hookup, debauchery, and cruel prank they can concoct. It speaks volumes about Gould and Sutherland's charm and chemistry that I found myself so entertained by their characters. Who are irredeemable jerks to…