Quick recap: Hijinks at a hospital during the Korean War? YOU BETCHA!
Fun (?) fact: Robert Altman’s 14 year old son wrote the lyrics to the opening theme song.
My thoughts: Four movies in, and I think I can finally say with confidence that I don’t really care for Robert Altman. I loved The Long Goodbye, but that was largely because of Elliot Gould,and I just didn’t get the appeal of Nashville or The Player. And now there is MASH to add to the list,which just might be my least favorite of all of his films thus far.
I have this image in my head of Donald Sutherland (Hawkeye) and Elliot Gould (Trapper John) standing behind me as I type this review, yelling things to me like, ‘buzzkill!’, ‘where’s your sense of humor?’ and ‘why are we here? What happened?’. Their imagined disappointment in me comes from the fact that I just didn’t think this movie was funny. Most of the jokes were about how hot the nurses were and how they wanted to have sex with the nurses, which, if you’re not an Animaniac, it’s just creepy to watch.
I can’t speak for the show, having never watched it ( I KNOW), but I was hoping for something along the same lines of being funny but also touching and dark at times. This movie was none of that. There was that one scene where Hawkeye and Trapper John saved a baby but they acted like such jackasses towards everyone that it ruined the moment.
Final review: 2/5
Up next: Full Metal Jacket
1001 Movie Nights 
I like this movie a lot, but it doesn’t send me rolling in the aisles. I find it to be really, really black, and I always thought that a dark finale would have been more appropriate than the actual ending of the film. If you didn’t like MASH, Nashville, or The Player, you’ll probably never join the bandwagon, but just for the record Macabe and Mrs. Miller is his masterpiece. On the other hand, if you want to be driven completely over the edge, try a marathon of Brewster McCloud and Popeye. Be sure to start with Brewster McCloud, because better men than me have thrown themselves out of windows midway through Popeye. Poor bastards.
I definitely agree about the dark finale but at the same time, I guess I can’t really fault Altman for trying to make it more lighthearted. I’m willing to give him another chance, though, so I’ll have to check out what you suggested. Except for Popeye because even when I watched it as a kid, I knew it was garbage. RIP Robin Williams.
RIP Robin Williams is right. I still can’t believe he’s gone. I read once that he considered the World According to Garp to be his first real performance in a movie, so that tells you something about Popeye right there. He totally wrote it off.
I’m happy whenever I hear that someone else likes The Long Goodbye. It’s sad that it’s so underappreciated and obscure. And it has one of my favorite endings of all time. Everything about that finale is pitch-perfect, including “Hooray For Hollywood.”