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My theory of the movie MASH vs the TV show MASH

posted 12 years ago by Movie_map
11 replies | jump to latest

My theory is that people who saw the movie first had an easier time embracing the TV show than the other way around. The three biggest complaints I read about the movie are that 1, it's very dark. 2, the overlapping dialog can be confusing and 3, its more a series of vignettes than a traditional narrative. For those reasons I suspect that it might be harder for long time viewers of the series to get into the movie. For myself, I saw the movie several times before the show premiered. I happen to think that the three complains I listed are actually some of the films strengths. Once I got past the cast changes and the fact that some things that occurred in the movie were ignored, I got into the series pretty quickly.

I'm wondering anyone agrees. I'm particularly interested in hearing from anyone who has the opposite view.

[–] Prismark10 11 years ago

I saw the tv series first and only caught the film many years later but had no issue in enjoying the film although it was more anarchic.

Its that man again!!

[–] wylierichardson-966-922691 9 years ago

My two cents worth: the movie is (arguably) better than the TV show. The show was good enough, but too often a kind of 'soap opera' feel would creep into it. For example, many episodes featured a long, banal monologue delivered by a wounded / bedridden soldier about 'life back home'. The movie didn't bother with this, and was stronger because of it.

[–] ck1-5 9 years ago

The movie made more sense to me. The doctors were drafted and ripped out of their private lives/practices, and obviously didn't want to be there; consequently, they weren't going to observe any more of the army's rules and regulations than was absolutely necessary. Even though they were basically pacifists in nature, they didn't stand on a soapbox like various characters in the TV series did with increasing frequency as the series went on. They didn't behave as if the North Korean army was being judged unfairly by the Allied forces.