M*A*S*H (30th anniversary restored special edition DVD)
Originally posted a long time ago on Paul’s Reviews Page
I’ll be rating movies on a three zone, 5-star scale. Each movie will be rated
on “Visual Appeal”, “Audio Appeal” and “Story Appeal”. Each of these three
zones can be rated up to 5 stars (or asterisks…. they load faster than
.GIFs)
M*A*S*H (30th anniversary restored special edition DVD)
V: ****
A: ***
S: ****
Synopsis: We follow the efforts of drafted doctors in wartime Korea to dispense good medicine and retain their own sanity.
Thoughts: When one looks at how the movie came to be (in the special features on the DVD) there is an enormous difference between the book and the screenplay, and a further enormous difference between the screenplay and the film. The movie portrayed war without the John Wayne/George C.Scott testosterone-fueled church-reinforced rabid patriotism so common in other war films. In M*A*S*H, we see doctors ankle-deep in the blood of soldiers who’ve barely graduated high school. Through all of this, the staff of the 4077th M*A*S*H struggle to not get sucked into the insanity of war; not to take it too seriously. If you grew up thinking M*A*S*H started as a TV series, you are sadly mistaken. See this. See it on the Special Edition DVD. The restoration is grand.