Patch Adams

Starring: Robin Williams, Monica Potters, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bob Gunton, Daniel London, Peter Coyote

Review by The Ranting WolfCastle

    I think if there is one thing that I hate about going to movies like this one, it would be when people applaud the film.  What's the point of that?   Does Robin Williams psychically feel it in his Hollywood mansion and bask in the overwhelming approval of the performance he gave?  Paying six bucks to see the movie is more than applause enough. 

    Robin Williams plays Patch Adams, a suicidal man that finds the only thing that makes him happy is making others feel better.  Touching.  So after a brief stint in the loony bin, he enrolls in medical school.  It isn't long before he sneaks into the campus hospital, and starts goofing around to make the patients happy, much to the dismay of the University's Dean, who states that the rule is "No student shall have contact with the patients until their third year."  Uh oh, a clash of personalities.  But Patch just won't listen, he wins over everyone on the face of the earth except for the Dean, who promptly kicks him out of school.  Of course another Dean lets Patch back in.  Patch decides to open his own clinic, in a shanty.   The place looks like a second rate operation, if I've ever seen one.  He and his loyal rank and file provide free health care to the less fortunate.  This gets him in trouble, and he has to defend himself in front of some kind of medical board in order to graduate.  Do you think he does?

    I can't stand sentimental movies.  Touching scenes where people are very happy bother me.  It's probably a problem I have, but until I deal with it, everyone else has to put up with me.  That's the main thing I didn't like about this film.  It seems as though every scene is someone being overwhelmingly happy because the main character made them that way.  The eternally grateful make me want to throw up.  But honestly it's not too obvious, just noticeable.    But what are they so happy about anyway, some freak med school punk decided to come into the room and act like a clown?  Laughing is fun and everything, but it's not going to put me through a triple bypass any easier.  Tell me you know what I'm saying.

    Another thing I didn't like about the movie, is the Liberal innuendoes scattered throughout the dialogue.  At one point everyone in the local restaurant Patch hangs out in decides to voice their disapproval at the health care system in America.   It's just a list that different people make up, and orderly take turns saying it, I hate that.  The screenplay suggests that free health care is the way to go.  Well it may very well be, but sitting around and bitching about it doesn't get you anywhere.  Patch may have helped a couple of the less fortunate in his shanty, but that's not really solving the problem.   Those people need to get off their double cheeseburger asses, and try to figure out a way to give everyone in America free health care.  Good luck.  Those people will be back at the counter face first in a basket o' fries quicker than you can say myocardial infarction.  And they will no doubt be uttering fraises such as "One time I didn't pay my insurance and the hospital wouldn't take out my appendix.  I could've died!"   No fucking shit lady.  Where do you think they get the money to pay the surgeon that would've performed the operation?  Another thing I hate about the characters is how everyone sucks Patch's dick throughout the entire film (metaphorically of course).  Even his roommate, who openly hates Patch, tells him that he has "a gift."  That's fantastic.  About the only person in the film that doesn't sing Patch's praises is the hard nosed Dean who sticks by the rules and is generally portrayed as an asshole.  But good for him. 

    The previews don't really give away much about the story, but they do show just about every funny part of the movie.  And those parts are all in a five minute montage of Robin fooling around in the patients' rooms.  This is a drama, don't be a sucker. 

    Some of the dialogue is funny, and Robin Williams is a very good actor.  It's strange that he can do dramas like this one.  If you were unconscious for the last ten years you would've laughed at the thought of TV's Mork becoming a dramatic actor.  But alas he has.  Hats off to him for that.

    The plot is pretty much predictable, and it tends to drag on a bit.   It's really not to long, it runs about two hours, but it seems like more.  I guess the fact that my bladder was about to explode through the better part of the film didn't really help.  But just when I thought it was almost over, there is a courtroom scene.  So that's what this movie has resorted to.  I usually only expect to see courtrooms in court movies, but I guess that's just me.  The trial doesn't take long, thank God.  And at the end of Patch's little speech, who walks through the doors, but those little kids that Patch cheered up way back at the beginning of the film.  And as if that isn't enough to make any reasonable and prudent person puke, the kids are all wearing red clown noses.  Please God take my life now, I can't take this kind of torture anymore!

    So it basically boils down to the fact that heartwarming scenes where everyone stands up and applauds the speech of the main character, sicken me.  I don't know what it is, but I get this burning down inside that builds to all out disgust.   The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I get really pissed off at everyone in the theatre that is doing the same as the characters on screen.  Why?  I don't know.

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