So this was next up on the AFI list, and all I knew about it is vague memories of having watched the TV show when I was a kid. I didn’t know if the movie even was a comedy like the show was, or if it was going to be a darker thing or what. Turns out that it is a “comedy,” but… ugh, like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, this is another movie that glorifies irreverent anti-authoritarianism in the form of jackass white guys who basically do a bunch of unacceptable things, but it’s cool because they’re the bad-boy heroes.

For instance, one of the big character conflicts in the movie is between our heroes (Trapper John M.D. and Hawkeye Pierce) and the strict, by-the-book Major Margaret Houlihan. So the boys sneak a microphone into her tent, broadcast her having sex to the whole camp, and then call her “Hot Lips” from then on to make fun of her bedroom talk. Later, they plot to roll up the side of the shower tent, so she’s exposed naked to a bunch of people who are sitting there for the sole purpose of humiliating her. The audience is clearly supposed to be on their side in this, and think they’re being hilarious — and laugh even more at her distraught (and ignored) complaints to the colonel.

That humiliation, btw, is like one fourth of the plot of the movie. It’s a Robert Altman movie, so has the kind of shaggy structure that he’s known for, but here it almost feels like it’s four episodes of TV stitched awkwardly together. There’s the episode where they humiliate Houlihan, there’s the episode where a guy can’t get it up and wants to kill himself[1], there’s a trip to Japan[2] where they get up to antics, and there’s a football game[3].

So look, I get it, 1970 was a different time, and maybe this all was amazingly funny back then, to people with the societal attitudes of the time. And I don’t think that the AFI should insist that the movies it shows fully hold up to modern politics, because they never will. (The next one up in podcast order is Sunrise, which has a plot centered around domestic violence.)

But when the movie is a comedy and you’re supposed to laugh at all this stuff that’s just not even remotely funny by modern standards, there’s just no way that it can hold up. Like, if it’s a dramatic movie and there are elements of a relationship that are yikes, you can bracket that off and enjoy the rest of what the movie offers. But when major fractions of the movie are dedicated to humiliating female characters in sexual ways and intended to elicit laughter… you’re not gonna laugh, and laughter is the whole point. Comedy fails harder than drama, and dated comedy fails very hard indeed.

Ultimately, then, this is maybe an interesting historical watch to see how people of 1970 thought about war and sex and whatever else, but it’s impossible to enjoy in modernity at any level other than historical inquiry. If they ever update this AFI list, there’s no way this will be on the next version.

  1. Featuring a fun bit of homophobia: He’s worried that he’s turning into “a fairy” and that’s why he wants to die. (The character’s name is “Painless” and they sing the famous theme song with lyrics that I didn’t know existed over a mock-funeral scene for him, before they coerce a woman into having sex with him “as a medical duty” so that he’ll feel better.) ↩︎

  2. You can tell they’re in Japan because they do a gong sound effect before every scene. ↩︎

  3. The “hilarious” bit here is that the one Black officer in the MASH unit is a former NFL player, so they play badly in the first half without him, then make big bets at high odds, then he comes in to win in the second half. Oh btw, his name is “Spearchucker.” Because he played javelin, see, don’t worry, it’s not racist, haha that’s the joke. ↩︎