Patch Adams (1998)
Director: Tom Shadyac Cast: Robin Williams, Monica Potters, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bob Gunton, Daniel London, Peter Coyote Screenplay: Steve Oedekerk Producers: Mike Farrell, Barry Kemp, Marvin Minoff, Charles Newirth Runtime: 115 min. US Distribution: Universal Rated PG-13: strong language, crude humor
Copyright 1998 Nathaniel R. Atcheson
There is a scene in Patch Adams in which Patch is in the center of a courtroom, surrounded by people who are giving him a lively standing ovation because of his strong-worded attack on a group of stoic doctors. When I noticed that the audience with whom I saw this film was reacting the same way, I realized that I was going to have a hard time finding someone who agrees with me about the quality of the picture.
You see, Patch Adams revolted me beyond all boundaries. I hated this movie for every second that I sat watching it, and I actively hate it now, days later, with the simpering, superficial, nauseatingly sentimental images forever plaguing my memories. I hate every element of the film, beginning with Tom Shadyac's shameless direction, and all the way up to the misguided and mishandled themes that the screenplay wants so desperately to convey. The badness of Patch Adams is stupefying. It's confounding. I can't believe a film can be this bad.
And yet, it's based on a real man who probably has a good point to make. In the film, Patch is played by the undefeatable and indefatigable Robin Williams, in a performance of such insulting pathos and sledgehammer sympathy that I wonder now if he is even human. In the beginning of the film, Patch commits himself to a mental institution because he doesn't want to kill himself. While there, he notices that the doctors don't care about the patients, and that the best way to get through to the patients is to treat them like human beings.
So, Patch goes on a crusade to be a great doctor who actually talks to his patients. He goes to medical school, where he meets Truman (Daniel London) and convinces him that it's good to help people. He also meets Carin Fischer (Monica Potters), the anti-male med student who just wants to go through the motions and be a successful doctor. Naturally, the dean of the medical school (Bob Gunton) hates Patch, and wants to thwart his plans, even though Patch gets the highest scores on all of his exams. So Patch decides that he's going to build a free clinic in the middle of nowhere to help people with any problem they may have.
And that, my friends, is the synopsis for what is easily the most abhorrent picture of 1998. On a superficial level, the film is not particularly bad: I wouldn't say the cinematography bothered me, and most of the performances seem to be exactly what Shadyac was aiming for (I actually liked Potter's performance, even if she is wasted). But the film fails fundamentally in execution. Every scene swells with grand, "emotional" music, played at maximum volume just to get us all to cry real hard. Take, for instance, the first scene, which shows Patch sitting on a bus. We don't know Patch yet, but there's sad music, and it's supposed to make us really sad that he's sad. Later on, Patch makes a lot of progress: he helps a dying patient (Peter Coyote) to enjoy the last days of his life, and the music as Patch is pushing the patient recklessly through the halls of the hospital is very lively. And when that patient finally dies (spoiler alert!), the music is very very sad.
But the problem with all of this is that the music should not be the center of the emotions. Real drama is character-based. You grow to like someone, and then something bad happens, and you feel it. We don't ever grow to know the dying patient; he's simply a vehicle for Patch's greatness. Real drama doesn't seem forced, or present just to make the audience cry. That's why Patch Adams is not real drama. It goes for every cheap tear imaginable, wringing tired and overbearing sentimentality out of every scene. Even scenes that have very little impact on the overall film are drowning in Marc Shaiman's sickening musical score.
Sentimentality like this is indeed bad. But it's not as bad as half-baked, simplistic themes. You see, Patch is a really great student. He aces his tests without studying, and does it so effectively that people think he's cheating. But Patch doesn't think that memorizing facts is the way to become a good doctor. "Why don't we see patients until the third year?" he bursts out every three seconds. Well, Patch, that might have something to do with the fact that you need to LEARN SOMETHING before you go treating patients. Not everyone has the capability of memorizing facts with no effort. Most of us have to study. And a doctor who really wants to help, but doesn't know a toe from a finger, probably won't be too successful in preventing death.
Oh wait, I almost forgot: the point of doctors is not just to "prevent death," but to "improve the quality of life!" Yes! That is true! And you can not do that without studying. You can not do that without going to medical school. What Patch never seemed to understand was the possibility that maybe, just maybe, it is a good idea to study first and talk to patients later. Follow the rules? Bah! Who needs the rules! Only uptight doctors follow the rules. The real saviors are the ones running around the hospitals with big red spheres on their faces and sporting baggy yellow pants.
And then there's the free clinic issue, which I find shockingly, frighteningly idealistic. A free clinic. In the middle of the forest. Where patients can be taken to be helped. For free. How will patients be transported to the free clinic? Will it have an emergency room? Or is it just for mental patients? And who, may I ask, will pay for it? The film does give some token attempts to question Patch's motives (I think another character asks him how he's going to pay for it, in addition to a little bit of meaningless blather about HMOs and medical insurance), but they certainly don't explore or challenge Patch's ideas to any meaningful extent.
Reader, please understand this: I am not making any kind of judgment on the real Patch Adams. I know nothing about him. If his beliefs mirror those of this film character, then I might like to have an intelligent discussion with him about them. But regardless of what the real Patch Adams believes, the themes put forth in this film are simplistic and phony. And in the last scene, the big, obligatory courtroom scene that forced my lunch halfway up my esophagus, Patch does a lot of shouting. Actually, Robin Williams does a lot of shouting. He shouts a lot about helping people, and a lot of people cry because they are moved by his words. I won't tell you that you can't be moved by his words, because I, too, was moved by his words. I was moved in such a profoundly negative way that I was reminded of how cheap and phony a cinematic experience can be. Patch Adams is the cheapest of them all.
Psychosis Rating: 0/10
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Nathaniel R. Atcheson
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