It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

A satire on soap operas dealing with a VERY strange housewife named Mary Hartman (Louise Lasser) and her heavily dysfunctional family and friends. It dealt with homosexuality, alcoholism, wife beating, drug abuse, rape, murder ALL done with a comic twist. Most TV shows wouldn't touch those subjects--but this one did.This was considered very strong material for its time. It usually played during the afternoon hours but parents were horrified that their children were being subjected to this. Personally I was 14 when it started--I just found it funny and not even remotely shocking. It was moved to late night (11:30) in most areas on the country. It had a successful run for a few years until creator Norman Lear decided to end it. There was a final episode that tied together all the loose ends.In terms of subject matter this was extreme...but its also very much of its time. The show didn't get too controversial (two gay characters were only allowed to talk to each other--no kissing or hugging) and the off the wall humor kept giving the show a light touch. So it was ahead of its time--but today it comes across as pretty slow and dated. The humor seems pretty silly now and the subject matter isn't even remotely extreme anymore. TV Land tried to revive it a few years ago and it didn't work.So--it did help push the boundaries of what could be shown and talked about on TV but, unfortunately, it doesn't age well.

This was indeed a work of art for many reasons. First, it was done tongue-in-cheek, but believe it or not really depicted real situations, which actually continue to happen in American life.For example it is astounding that a recent survey found that something like 20% of Americans actually believe that the Sun revolves around the earth. Another example of just plain dumb, or totally uninformed people, can be found by remembering that during the early World War II years, polls showed that in spite of ads, posters, war campaigns, and other national information efforts, about 25% of Americans still had no idea who Franklin D. Roosevelt or Adolph Hitler were.Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was a classic because it warned us that we still have a long way to go, if we want to be accepted as an informed society.I would love to get a copy of the entire production, so I could play it for my grand children. We, and they, need to know that these types of people are still out there, and must be understood and dealt with on a daily basis.Luis J. Orozco, II

this show was the most bizarre, far out, weird thing that I've ever seen on American TV, maybe world TV, but i don't speak all the languages of all the shows i've ever seen over the years. I remember a skit L. Lasser did on "the Smothers Brothers" show, about 'foam', yes, foam. And Dody Goodman was just a hoot. I can't see why anyone would think that if you liked this show you'd like 'silence of the lambs', so i voted against that recommendation. I only saw a few episodes, and I have wondered for years, with all the crap they exhume and re-run, why this show has not been returned to air. Americans just don't get parody and satire- they are afraid they themselves are being poked fun at- and you know what? they are right!

No good at all. Not funny. Not witty. Not insightful. This non-comedy was about presenting ordinary, boring events as though they were absurdist commentaries. Uh... they were not. They were ordinary and boring. Norman Lear, who seemed to have acquired a license to damage television comedy in the '70s and '80s, somehow sold the idea of a show about walking dead people to a network that didn't know it was being duped. The favorite topic of the faux humorists of that era was the banality of life. Thus, Lear's faux comedy seeks to make us think that the banal is funny or, at least, worthy of being laughed at. He was wrong, and doubly so. Life is not banal, and a banal life is not funny. Nor, perhaps tripling his offenses, is a banal life something that anyone should laugh at.Like "All in the Family," this second-best to dead air is about pretending that the worst of the American condition is actually a place to find some kind of truth about ourselves. Well, maybe it is. If so, the truth is that we can be suckered into believing--I hope only briefly--that lame scripts, acting, sets, and photography, combined with a popular sense that stuff like Patrick Stewart's hideous SNL "erotic bakery" skit is something no one wants to be caught _not_ laughing at, means that this utter dud is funny.Zero stars on any scale.