funny but overrated, and maybe outdated

Rating: Null/10 (16 August 2002)

I had heard for a lot of time that M*A*S*H* was a great timeless masterpiece. I saw it, and I enjoyed, but it is certainly not on that high of a level. It is certainly a comedy masterpiece, with hilarious and very memorable characters.(No booze! I want sex!) Perhaps the most notable quality of MASH, in terms of its construction, is its lack of construction. When Altman made this movie, he took the basic plot elements of the script, and let the actors improvise all they wanted, and then cut and pasted it into a movie. It begins with Hawkeye and Duke being drafted, and ends when they are suddenly relieved. It also doesn't have as much to do with war as many people say it does. The war is all implied, and a lot of the great scenes(ie Painless' "suicide" and the Hot Lips-PA scene) don't directly have anything to do with war. If I had been alive during the Nixon era, always being told to shut up and stand in my place and not criticize the war, a movie about horny war surgeons who have no respect for authority would have had more significance. I might have bought it and worshipped it. But in the days of South Park, and a dirty offensive comedy coming out every other week, MASH doesn't seem as profound. It didn't seem to be a masterpiece to me, just a hilarious, well-acted, haphazard piece of film.