PATCH ADAMS
Please God don't let me have this guy for a doctor
Just think - if Robin Williams dies today, this is what he'll be remembered for.
Patch Adams is the kind of sappy crap that gives sappy crap a bad name. It's the kind of movie where the timely arrival of a butterfly can save somebody from suicidal feelings. I could even hack Beaches, which says something about my schmaltz tolerance, but this movie is like having some big fat hairy guy kick you repeatedly in the nuts and spit at you "Cry, goddammit, cry!"
This movie is based, somewhat, on the life of the real-life Hunter "Patch" Adams. I have to wonder what this guy thinks about the movie - I'd be hard-pressed to dislike a movie about myself whose moral is WORSHIP ME!!! I AM A GOD AMONG MEN!!! Hunter is introduced as a suicidal mental patient, voluntarily committed (Alice Cooper-style) into a mental institution when it looks like every time he sits down to dinner he's going to try plunging a utensil into his carotid artery.
So while he's in there, he finds that the medical establishment is a big, mean, faceless, heartless entity - except for the nurses, they're good, but the doctors are all Evil with a capital E - and he heals himself better than they do when he takes it upon himself to scare the living crap out of his fellow lunatics. He thinks of this as "reaching out". I think of this as trying to frighten them to death. I mean, really, watch this scene where he convinces this squirrel-phobic guy that he's at war with a legion of the wee beasties - I'm sure this is all very therapeutic for Hunter, but this poor crazy bastard is probably going to have to be strapped down for a year.
So he checks himself out of the hospital, and into med school. Wow, this is some med school - the kind where the first thing they tell you is a big, rousing speech about how they're gonna drum the humanity out of you altogether, make you heartless and callous, and this is going to make you a better doctor. It is hard enough to swallow the notion of a medical school founded on such a principle - it is harder still to imagine what follows, a round of rousing applause from all the students. All, that is, except for Patch. (oh yeah, he's calling himself "Patch" now, for some reason. He hasn't even healed anybody yet. Does this smack of arrogance to you?)
Patch then makes it his quest to inject the humanity back into the business of being a doctor by making laughter his primary prescription. How he accomplishes this is a largely mixed bag. Maybe it's not unreasonable that when the students are introduced to a patient's condition, he asks what the patient's name is. (never mind right now that this just steals from the immeasurably better The Shawshank Redemption) And yes, a roomful of children on chemotherapy probably would laugh at a man who comes into their room, puts an enema bulb on the end of his nose and starts tap-dancing with bedpans on his feet. They're too young and naïve to be afraid of such a man, like I would be. But a cranky, violent man diagnosed with a terminal illness would not likely take well to somebody dressed as an angel approaching him and listing off all the euphemisms for death that he can think of in some poorly-reasoned attempt to get this guy to accept his imminent demise. For that matter, I'd say that of the two, the patient has a better chance of leaving that room alive.
All the obvious, manipulative elements are here - the uncaring authority figure who finds Patch to be a nuisance, despite Patch having done nothing to really rattle any cages. He is of course only there to be a villainous foil to Patch. There's the roommate, who at first wants to tow the line and wants Patch to grow up but eventually learns to embrace his philosophy. And, I kid you not, there's a climactic courtroom scene, which features all those chemotherapy kids marched in en masse and putting on red rubber noses to show their support for Patch. (never mind right now that this just steals from a previous Williams film where he played Jesus - well, metaphorically - Dead Poets Society) Are these kids in any shape to be taken out of bed, off their IV's, into another building, into a room packed with people...I mean, for those kids to have even made it THAT far says something for their superhuman immune systems. I admit to having entertained some speculation as to how many of those kids didn't make it back to their beds alive.
Really, this courtroom scene is the most ridiculously over-the-top one in the whole mess. Only two things would have made it more amusing - one, if Patch actually collapsed while on the stand, Philadelphia-style. Or two, if Williams filmed the entire scene while nailed up on a big cross. I would have loved that. It would have demonstrated to me that Williams and the filmmakers really have an idea of just how shameless this movie is. As it is, I'm pretty sure that they all think this is really Good Drama.
Scenes like that gave me a chuckle; it's sad to see such a great talent like Williams going to pot in his middle age, but if he can't entertain me with his genius, he can entertain me with his appallingly bad taste. But a lot of this movie just...no exaggeration, it made me want to puke. Take the whole "butterfly" thing - Patch is literally standing at the edge of a cliff, so deeply in despair that he's thinking of leaping right off. But then a butterfly flits along and lands on his hand. This shakes him out of this suicidal malaise, and he becomes happy/zany Patch once again. Not unfamiliar with these devastating depth of depression, I find this absurdity rather offensive, not only to my intelligence but to any sense of honesty and decency about the subject.. Williams, being manic-depressive himself, should be ashamed.
There's also a seriously tacky scene where one character reveals herself to be the survivor of childhood sexual abuse (oh, THAT'S why she finds Patch to be a nut, not because she's got a brain in her head) - which is actually used to touch off a romance! I mean, ick!
Worse yet is how this love interest's (minimal) involvement in the story (basically, the same thing as the roommate - to be cold and standoffish, and then to be won over by Patch's mighty philosophy) is resolved in an amazingly nasty and arbitrary fashion. This last element has no real purpose in the film except to yank tears from the audience - it has no real bearing on the story, and doesn't actually do anything with the only character it affects (Patch) that hadn't already been done. Had this any basis in reality, it might have been forgivable to include it in the film. But this thread of the plot is pure fiction. This never happened to the real Hunter Adams, and its being written into the film seems shamelessly manipulative indeed.
Patch Adams has its fair share of laughs. Williams doesn't let his gifts go entirely to waste, and he often lets himself stretch out and treat his audience to some much-needed mirth in this maudlin affair. Funny as this film sometimes is, it's still not worth sitting through the sentiment, sap and stupidity.
Williams' next movie has him playing Jesus Christ again. He's really got to lay off this shit.
The last year of Gene Siskel's life was one which saw him have to deal with more doctors and hospitals than most of us have had to deal with in our lives so far. I think it's safe to say that he went to his grave with a pretty good understanding of what the medical industry is all about. And I think it says a lot that Patch Adams was the last "Worst Movie Of The Year" that Siskel ever selected. (I hate having to invoke the death of the poor guy in order to attack this movie, but I think his selection of this it speaks volumes)