Great, but takes a stupid turn near the end that harms the overall product

Rating: 9/10 (5 August 2000)

I loved nearly every moment of MASH. It balanced its drama and comedy quite perfectly. The acting was great and the characters were well developed. This is also one of the few episodic movies which works well. Episodic films usually become tedious. Every episode in MASH is entertaining and works towards developing its characters and its mood.
My only complaint, which was originally going to be a small one, but as it went on and on and on, it became a big enough problem to knock the film down a notch in my opinion: the football sequence. This sequence goes on for nearly twenty minutes, and occupies most of the last moments of the film. Before this, the film kept getting better and better as it went on. Then, with the football game, it hit an insurmountable wall. The one thing this film did not need was a sports finale. Everything seems to depend on the game, even though absolutely nothing does depend on it. I was interested in the characters, and during the game, I couldn't even tell which one was which. Therefore, I could have cared less about what was happening here. I became terribly bored, almost to the point of fast forwarding through this sequence. To boot, Hot Lips becomes insufferably annoying and uncharacteristically bimbonic as she dresses up as a cheerleader. We were told in a previous scene that Hot Lips rebuked the others for playing football, so it seemed unlikely to me that she would turn into a cheerleader.
I was praying that the film would not end at the end of the game, and luckily, it didn't. It does have a rather classy ending, as I would expect from Altman. The credit sequence is very unique, kind of like the end of Welles' Magnificent Ambersons or Altman's own opening credits for his greatest masterpiece, Nashville. I still give MASH a 9/10, but it should have been a 10/10, because it was going that way the entire picture.