Vastly Over-Rated

Rating: 2/10 (20 January 2003)

I realize that this movie has achieved almost cult status and is widely regarded as a classic, but it just didn't work for me. The best thing I can say about it is that it gave birth to the long running television series of the same name, which may still be the best television series ever made. But how anyone could watch this movie and get the idea to make it into a television series is beyond me.
I readily confess, of course, that (as with almost everyone born in the 1960's or later) my introduction to and conception of MASH is the TV series. It's truly difficult for me to relate to Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye Pierce, for example. Not that he, or any of the actors, did a bad job. It's just that the TV series is so ingrained in my mind that it's hard to see different actors putting their unique spins on familiar characters. Hawkeye, Trapper John (Elliott Gould), Frank Burns (Robert Duvall), Hot Lips Houlihan (Sally Kellerman) and Col. Blake (Roger Bowen) are portrayed very differently than their TV counter-parts. That's fine (and the actors did well) but it's still disconcerting.
The problems I felt with this movie went far beyond the difficulties involved with relating to an unfamiliar cast playing familiar characters, though. The story focuses on the experiences of Captains Pierce and Duke Forrest (Tom Skerritt) at the 4077 MASH in the Korean War. It opens with their arrival and closes with their discharge. But to me the movie lacks any clear focus or consistency. It doesn't seem to be building to anything and in the end it just fizzles out quietly without any real climax. The zany antics of the doctors come across here as mean-spirited more than fun, and there's way too much emphasis on the football game between the 4077 and the 325th Evac. I mean - who really cares? To me, this movie didn't even seem to have a strong anti-war message. Anti-military perhaps, but not anti-war (and the two are not the same thing, in my opinion.)
I realize that I'm not in tune here with most people's thinking, but as far as I'm concerned the best thing about this movie is actually hearing the words to the familiar MASH theme: "Suicide Is Painless." I also appreciated the fact that, this being a motion picture rather than a TV series, the horrors of war (ie, the wounds of the soldiers) could be more graphically (and therefore more soberingly) portrayed. Aside from that, nothing much here appealed to me.
2/10