WHAT ABOUT BOB?
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
WHAT ABOUT BOB? is a film starring Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss.
My expectations were not high going into the auditorium. Bill Murray is one of the most uneven, undisciplined stars in Hollywood today and Richard Dreyfuss isn't far behind. Which means mugging, smirking, doing this eye-thing with the camera that says hey watch me I'm being pretty cute over here.
Leaving the auditorium, I felt I had been entertained, albeit in a rather predictable, formulaic way, but, yes, I had had a pretty decent time back there in the dark with Bill and Richard.
Bill Murray's character Bob is a near-basket case of neuroses. Agoraphobia, haphephobia (irrational fear of being touched -- old Peanuts joke "Haphephobia is better than none"), manipulative, dependent.
Richard Dreyfuss is his new, ambitious, success-obsessed doc. He had a bust of Freud in his office, he's named his children Sigmund and Anna, his wife is a doormat, and he's out the door, on vacation until Labor Day.
Bob's wants treatment now and follows his new doc to his New England retreat (Virginia stands in for Vermont here). The doc expects a live remote for Goodmorning America and gets Bob.
Whose crazy, Bob, the doc, or the audience? One gets better, one will get better, and the third will get over it. Okay, for matinee prices it's okay. Murray and Dreyfuss efficiently chew every stick of scenery the script hands them. They're cute, they're sort of funny in an icky way. I mean we are laughing at crazy people here, aren't we?
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
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