The show is better by quite a bit

Rating: 7/10 (30 October 2001)

I wish that I had been born in about 1950 so that I could have seen this film before the TV show ever existed. However, being a huge fan of the TV show and born in 1975 means that I am probably disadvantaged in rendering a truly unbiased opinion about the flic.
I do think the movie was funny and cutting, as the TV show is. And I was fascinated to learn the words to that peaceful theme tune for MASH is "Suicide is Painless". That cracked me up. I didn't like Sutherland as much as Alan Alda but I did like Robert Duvall as Father Mulcahy. It was cool to see Radar. It would have been nice to see Klinger. And Hot Lips was great too.
This film doesn't even take war seriously-that is, Altman is so anti-war that he doesn't even deem it worthy of really tough satire. It is more of a series of michievous events by people who are bored during a war. The soldiers get up to the usual hanky panky and this is the sort of side of the army that a less daring filmmaker might not have made.
It is probably not the side of the army that the army wants you to see. All kinds of hijinx in attempt to stave off boredom. I must say that I prefer the TV show but one can see where the inspiration for the TV show came from.