If you don't "get" irony, don't watch this film....

Rating: 9/10 (9 November 2002)

M*A*S*H is intelligent, poignant, witty, occasionally superbly funny, and deeply ironic. If you don't "get" irony, don't watch this film - but if you do, you're in for a treat.
The casting is perfect, resulting in a blacker and more edgy texture than the TV series (which was excellent in its way, but less true to the books). M*A*S*H (the book) is half way between the Marx Brothers and Catch-22, and this film does a remarkable job of capturing the essential absurdity of an army medical unit: a group of people who exist principally to undo the effects of the rest of the army. This film, although it has moments of knockabout farce, rarely lets you forget the cause of all this madness: just over the hill, young men are killing each other for a cause they scarcely understand.
I guess that those who saw the TV series with a laughter track may have different expectations from this film, but as a UK viewer who saw the TV series first mercifully free of canned laughter, and who had also read the book, I found this film was everything I expected and more.

Required viewing for all those who have lost sight of the connection between "foreign adventures" and body bags.