Moderately Funny

Rating: 7/10 (26 February 2000)

I am a person who grew up, and grew sick of, the CBS tv-hit series. It was always on in my house, even in reruns. This movies seems to be like a series of racier tv episodes. It kind of does not flow like normal Altman movies (if you can call them normal). This seems like a string of jokes strung together by the same characters with nothing in between to glue the characters together. Every other Altman movie has a minor connection between decently sized stories, or at least one good story. So, much of the humor was lost in that. Plus, I also read, and saw the lesser movie of, Catch-22. This movie, although based on a different book, seems like it was trying to capture the essence of Catch-22 by making it chaotic and dark. At times it works, and at times it doesn't.
Don't get me wrong, these are just reasons I did not think that this is a great movie. However, I did like it. The jokes in it were pretty funny, and the theme song had me laughing for a while. I wish that they used lyrics to the theme song for the TV shows' credits. The suicide scene was funny, as well as the trip to Japan. But, it just did not seem to have any flow or reason for disjunction. At least in Catch-22, the reason for jerkiness was to make it seem like a look back that all blurs together. This seems like you are there but pass out for lengths of a time. But, it made me laugh for awhile, but it had its slow parts. I really liked how it ended. 7/10
P.S. Contrary to a below comment, it does swear in the movie. How it passed for a PG rating, I'll never know. But this was the earliest instance I have seen of a non-R rated movie with the "f"-word in it. Check the football game, right between music. A player says to watch your head, or i'll rip it off, or something like that with an f word in there. So Ha!