Sally Kellerman was key to this movie's success.

Rating: 9/10 (17 July 2003)

I just finished watching the movie (whose title, like the TV show that started in 1972, was spelled M*A*S*H) and found it just as good as I had remembered from seeing it, originally, in the movie theater. I also have read the book on which the picture was based, and have seen many episodes of the extraordinarily popular TV series.
I liked the movie much better than the series, while recognizing that the series was better than other seriocomic TV series. As everyone is aware, M*A*S*H was more about the Vietnamese War than the Korean War it was set in. In many ways the series was more serious, more blatantly anti-war, than the movie. But there are many serious anti-war undercurrents in the movie, such as blood pulsing from a patients mouth during an operation, the shots of the the football players smoking grass on the sidelines, and even the long hair and facial hair of the doctors. Audiences in 1970 were not used to graphic depictions of woumds and surgery. Pot and long hair were "hippy" make love not war symbols. So it was definitely an anti-war movie.

But the reason that I am posting this comment is that in my recent viewing of the picture I first realized how critical Sally Kellerman's performance was to the picture's success, She is not only damn good looking but her acting is terrific. While her cheer-leader scenes help keep the picture from stalling during the football game, it is her initial arrival at the base, and, later, her bathrobe clad complaint to Col. Blake, that attracted my attention regarding the quality of her acting.