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M*A*S*H (1970)

Premise: Near the front lines of Korean War, two new doctors arrive at a surgical unit and provide hijinks and antics, to the delight of some and the dismay of others.

Rating: Wonderfully balances the tone, but with grossly outdated gags.


I've been watching a ton of films lately, many of them quite old, and have gotten away from doing reviews.  I'm trying to get them going again, if only as a way to document my thoughts.  Often, it's not even about what is good or bad anymore, in terms of entertainment, but it's a learning exercise.

M*A*S*H is pretty dope from the jump.  The look of the film is raw and very 70s.  The opening titles, with the familiar theme music just shows people getting airlifted with injuries and it was very watchable.  The tone of this film is like something I'd never seen before, chronologically.  It's a bloody mess, in terms of surgery, but the tone of the jokes and what amounts to a bromance is such a great juxtaposition to the horrors of war.  They pepper in actual serious stakes from time to time, but it is, at its heart, a screwball comedy set in a warzone...almost like Animal House, Van Wilder, or Porkys.

It is, however, outdated.  And I don't even mean offensive (which it's also that, but whatever).  It's DEFINITELY misogynist and racist (the only black man is a football player named Spear-chucker) in everything from the outright jokes, to what amount to constant harassment and sexual assault by superiors, to general lack of agency of anyone who isn't a white man.  I mean, it's 1970, so that's not even the issue...

The issue is that it's just not relatable anymore.  The conflicts that drive some of the jokes just don't make sense on a multitude of levels so it's hard to assign stakes and the jokes just don't land because they don't make sense.

For example:
There is a dude with a big penis that all the other guys want to check out when he showers (weird) because he's known for being a legend with women.
There is one time that he can't perform sexually, so he thinks he's a homosexual because he didn't get a boner.  (huh?)
His solution is to commit suicide rather than be gay (not good)
His friends encourage his suicide and give him fake death pills (awful)
It's all a plan to get another underling to have sex with him to bring him back around, before returning home to her husband (pretty fucked up all around.)

So, I'm not OFFENDED by that, it's just hard to find humor in any of it since it just nothing that connects at any turn and you don't have anyone to root for.

What the movie does well is how it treats religion, power, war, etc -- almost with a satirical take.  Earnest religious people are openly mocked amidst the war, which is something I didn't expect.  And the cast is great.  Robert Duval, Donald Sutherland...many others.

The third act devolves into a silly football game that's dumber than the rest of the movie.  ...so, good groundwork, I understand why its important, but it doesn't hold up.  I think the show it spawned is probably better art by today's standards.

I can't even count how many times I have watched this movie, but if I could, the number would be pretty large.

Yeah, from a societal standpoint, I suppose a lot of the jokes didn't age well.

Don't care...awesome movie, and spun off one of the greatest TV shows of all-time.

I did not know that MASH was originally a movie. I will check it out. Do any of the cast from the series appear in this movie?

The only main cast member from the movie that plays the same role in the TV series was Gary Burghoff...aka Radar O'Reilly.

Thanks Stroke. He's a good one.

Interestingly the theme song is "Suicide is Painless", which I believe was sung in the movie, but never in the TV show.  An enjoyable movie in my opinion, but I agree with Dave that many things don't agree with today's moral issues; but that's true of most older films.

I could have written the exact same thing as my assessment.   

You can't pin today's morals on a movie made about 5 decades ago, especially a period piece movie set a couple decades before that.