Review of MASH (54)

Plot
The staff of a Korean War field hospital use humor and hijinks to keep their sanity in the face of the horror of war.

Jason's Thoughts
Prior to working our way through this list, I had never seen a single Robert Altman movie in my life.  Now I have seen two of them (MASH, Nashville), and I can safely say that I do not want to see another one of his  movies ever again.  Ever.

I honestly tried to watch MASH with an open mind, but it wasn't too long after it started that I knew I was going to be in for a long ride.  MASH is full of the same annoyances that made Nashville dreadful to watch - too little plot, too many characters, too many conversations going on at once.  In most regards, MASH is pretty much the same disjointed mess as Nashville, just set in Korea.

At least with Nashville, though, it built up to a certain point.  What that point exactly was escapes me since I have tried hard to remove that movie from my memory, but the build up doesn't happen with MASH.  Unless everything was leading up to a football game that has nothing to do with anything.  If that was the point, then it was successful in that regard.

The one truly amazing aspect of this film is the fact that it somehow spawned off one of the most successful television shows of all time.  This, of course, could be due to the fact that Robert Altman had nothing to do with the TV show. The differences between TV and film don't just end there either.  On the television series, MASH stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, but the big screen version could very well mean Mr. Altman's S**t Heap.

That is all.

Crystal's Thoughts
I take full credit for this movie sitting in our living room for nearly six months.  I think perhaps that should have been a sign to never watch MASH.  But this past weekend, I was excited as I was mostly caught up on assignments and had time to watch a movie!  Two hours later, what a disappointment it was.

For some reason, I thought MASH was supposed to be a really good movie.  The reviews I heard had to have been about the TV show and not the movie.  I am actually not even sure how to write my own review of the movie as for the vast majority of it, I had no clue what was going on.  I guarantee that if we wouldn’t have “had” to watch and finish this movie, it likely would have been turned off less than half way into the movie.

There really was no storyline that I could determine.  There seemed to simply be military doctors and nurses on screen, cutting into a body from time to time or arguing a point that was indeterminable to the viewer.  There was so much talking, and actors spoke over one another.  Background noise also made it difficult to focus in on anything anyone was saying.

I certainly do not blame the actors.  They were merely making do with the script and storyline they had under little to no direction from the director Robert Altman.  I feel confident stating that as a majority of the actors in the film turned out to be pretty darn successful (Donald Sutherland, Tom Skerritt).  I also feel confident blaming the director as this is now the second, incomprehensible film I’ve seen by the guy (Nashville being the other).  Thankfully, no more of his movies are on the list.  

And thankfully Jason didn’t tell me who the director of MASH was until we were well into the film so there was no going back.

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