Home :: DVD :: Romantic Comedies :: General  

Classics
Contemporary
General

Dr. T & The Women

Dr. T & The Women

List Price: $9.98
Your Price: $9.98
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 .. 12 >>

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: This is two hours of my life I can't get back.
Review: Although there were a few humorous parts in this movie, there was no plot. I kept trying to find it, but it wasn't there. The movie was so far fetched that I would like to slap the writers. It's a waste of time and money. They leave a lot of lose ends untied and just when you think the movies going somewhere, it doesn't. I'm ashamed of you Richard Gere.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Dr. T & The Women
Review: Better than the average movie, Many hilarious and some serious situations. Will watch many times over.....

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I watched it - now may I open my wrists?
Review: They say that Alaska has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation. Personally, I think the highest suicide rate in the world will be found in any home showing this awful, AWFUL movie. I kept looking at my watch wondering how much longer the film had left before it ended. The young lady I watched the film with kept asking me what time it was almost every fifteen minutes during the movie. When it finished, we both thought the film seemed like it was 3 hours long because it was so difficult to watch. When it finally ended, she actually was angry at me and cursed at me for picking it out (I thought with Gere and Hunt, it would be a good movie - big mistake). For myself, I never felt so irritated by a film in my life. How could this get made? How could anyone say that Altman is a good director? And I thought he was supposed to be a liberal - this film has to be the most demeaning, degrading, obnoxious, offensive films about women I have ever seen. I am surprised that NOW wasn't rioting in the streets when this came out. In fact, I feel like rioting in the streets after having watched it! One of the least enjoyable move experiences I have ever had. Thanks for nothing, Robert Altman!!!Do NOT rent this film!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Not as bad as they say....but not good either
Review: Richard Gere is actually rather charming as Dr. T. If he appears more relaxed than usual, it's probably because this is one of the few roles where he hasn't had to carry a gun. He isn't racing against the clock to stop the villain as a bombastic score blares away on the soundtrack. And what a relief! This film must have been an actor's holiday.

Unfortunately for us, the good time they all seem to be having on-screen never totally coalesces into a redeeming movie. And that isn't exactly Altman's fault, although you have to wonder if he wasn't tempted to rewrite Anne Rapp's (lousy) script.

One of the many irate one-star dispensing reviewers here had his blue jeans in a wad over Dr. T's fling with the golf pro while his beloved wife languishes in the loony bin. The reviewer was outraged that, even after this violation of trust, the movie continues to portray Dr. T in a positive light. To me, the affair and the film's treatment of it was the one truly honest and refreshing thing about this cartoony mess. Sure, it's terrible that Dr. T cheats on his (unavailable) wife; but it's awfully human, too --and Altman/Rapp portray that without turning the three sides of the triangle into cranks or psychopaths. (Adrian Lyne, are you taking notes???) The scenes between Gere and Helen Hunt have a real spark to them; the dancing around one another before getting in too deep nicely conveys the fascination of watching opposites attract.

The rest of the movie ranges from mildly amusing to missed occasion to total crud. Even though Laura Dern, a wonderful actress, is thrown away here as the champagne-sipping sister-in-law who wears unflattering hats, you may want to follow her character's example and tipple a few --especially if you plan on watching this film all the way through to the unnecessary (and needlessly graphic) birth sequence at the end. Lee Grant, who shows up briefly as a psychiatrist, has such a beckoning low growl to her line readings that she makes you hungry for more substantial fare. Farrah Fawcett is touching as a trophy wife come unhinged; but the mentally ill never hold Altman's interest for long (cross-reference Sterling Hayden's short shrift in The Long Goodbye) and Fawcett has too little screen time to really root around in her character's malaise. Would that we had seen LESS of Shelley Long (her role is beneath her) and the unstomachable Tara Reid. Reid's scenes as a tour guide are the film's nadir, tasteless and repugnant. Did Altman and Anne Rapp really think that jokes about JFK's assassination were funny or even palatable? Born in 1975, Reid possibly does not realize how revolting she is in delivering these lines. Some of her elders ought to have taken her aside and told her.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Dr. T & The Never Finished Watching
Review: My Review: My True Rating Scale is a -5 stars. I did not finish watching the "MOVIE." No one should waste time watching this "MOVIE." It looks like I will be forced to break this dvd into small pieces and throw it in the trash.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Only ONE performance worth watching...
Review: The reason I gave one star to this movie is for the ONE and only star who gave a worthwhile performance, and that was Tara Reid, who played Dr. T's youngest daughter, Connie. Her's was the only "normal" character in the film, but sadly her scenes were too few and far between. This is a BOOORRRING film with far too many sub plots that never seem to get tied up. The cast is all star quality, with Richard Gere, Helen Hunt, Kate Hudson, Laura Dern, Shelley Long and the aforementioned, Tara Reid, but aside from Reid's performance it was a total waste of film. The best performance is wasted in a purely or unfairly purposely designated background, almost filler capacity, which leaves the rest of the cast to fill in the majority of the film with an utter waste of the viewers time. There are a lot of other reviews that go into detail about the "plot"? of the movie, so I won't repeat it again, except to clarify that Kate Hudson plays Richard Gere's daughter, Dee Dee, who is the lesbian Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader hopeful, who is about to get married, but is in love with her Maid of Honour, Marilyn, who is played by Liv Tyler, and Tara Reid plays his other daughter, Connie, who is a JFK Conspiracy theorist, which is a story line that should have been given far more attention, as it would have been far more interesting than anything else in this absurd movie. Watch it at your own risk, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Good Cast Weak Story
Review: I have Respect for Robert Altman but this Film is as Flat as a Board Nailed to the Ground.and as for Richard Gere? this isn't the early 80's anymore.looking at the Box for this Film&the thoughts Presented with Gere as the Main Actor one might think back to When Gere was COOL&Had all the Ladies on the Main Screen but this film is a far cry from that time period.it never even comes close to what you think you are gonna see.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: It Could Have Been Better
Review: Casual browsers at the video store will likely be drawn to this movie by its outstanding cast, however with the exception of some good scenes in the waiting room, this film fails to deliver. I did watch it all the way through, wondering where it was going. As many of the supporting rolls were performed by interesting actors, I was hoping to see more development but was left hanging. The ending is really disappointing it just runs out of gas. It was like the film makers did not know how to end it and they just winged it. I was just as confused as Richard Gere in the wedding scene. Whats going on here?

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Lesser Robert Altman film has its moments
Review: Director Robert Altman's movie, Dr. T and the Women might best be described as lesser Altman. It doesn't have the range or the power of his early works, such as M.A.S.H., Nashville or McCabe and Mrs. Miller. The satire isn't as biting or as insightful as it is in his more recent films like The Player and Short Cuts. Still, lesser Altman is better than the best movies of half the directors at work today.

Dr. T, is the nickname of Dr. Sullivan Travis, a Dallas gynecologist who is much favored by the city's wealthy and influential women. Both at work and at home, where he lives with his wife and two daughters, as well as a recently moved-in sister and her three girls, Dr. T's world is one filled with women. Even the new assistant golf pro at his country club is female. About his only contact with other males is the hunting and fishing afternoons he shares with three buddies. This is not a man besieged by the opposite sex. This is one who is quite happy with his situation in life. He considers himself fortunate.

His world begins to come apart when his wife, Kate [Farrah Fawcett], has a major nervous breakdown in the middle of one of the city's most fashionable malls. She winds up in a posh institution where she is diagnosed as suffering from something called the Hestia complex, a condition in which a woman falls apart from being loved too much. (Whether or not such a condition actually exists is beside the point.) Meanwhile, Dr. T has a practice to attend to, as well as a daughter who is about to be married. It isn't long before the new golf pro catches his eyes. As is often the case in real life, it doesn't take long for a content and ordered life to unravel in the right circumstances.

Richard Gere has never been nicer than he is as Dr. T. The chemistry between him and both Ms. Fawcett and Helen Hunt, who plays the golf pro, is much stronger than it was with Wynona Ryder in last year's Autumn in New York. He hasn't lost his touch. Indeed, his interaction with all the women in this picture is a lot of fun to watch. All of the actresses are strong, especially Laura Dern as the hard-drinking sister, Shelley Long as T's office manager, and Liv Tyler as Marilyn, his daughter's maid of honor and the one who is the ultimate undoing of the wedding. Altman has a history of creating strong roles for women. It is no wonder so many actresses line up to work with him, despite the fact that the pay is far less than they usually get.

Dr. T and the Women has been criticized for being antifeminist. I don't think that it is. Altman is a satirist. In this movie he takes a look at a certain type of woman, namely the kind who marries well and finds it neither necessary nor fulfilling to work. Many such women still exist, and I personally do not begrudge their right to live as they please. To each his own. They are, however, not sacrosanct and are as fair a target of satire as any other group. Besides, if being always politically correct means that one has to cast aside one's sense of humor, then I say that a little political incorrectness is always in order.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Grossly under-rated, relaxed Altman.
Review: Altman's red rag to an audience that didn't play. At first, 'Dr. T' seems like one of those neanderthal, anti-feminist 'comedies' from the 1970s that stretched their 'laughs' from how funny and silly and shallow and brittle 'powerful' women really are. Dr. T is a popular gynacologist, with a large and demanding clientele. The opening credits manages in familiar Altman-style to catch the dynamics of a group, in this case a gaggle of rich, bored, aroused, hysterical women who can't stop chattering at a soon-incomprehensbile pitch. Dr. T's all-female family, loving but spoiled, similarly babble, a tendency heightened by the upcoming wedding of one daughter, and the steady mental deterioration of his wife. Amid all the female hubbub, Dr. T is a beacon of quiet sanity, a man so inured to women's bodies, he has to cant about their spiritual uniqueness. His outings with his buddies for golf and hunting may seem ridiculous in their posturing, but, compared to the amazons, offer a manly calm.

Had 'Dr. T' continued in this vein, it would have been fair enough to label it misogynistic. But having wound us up into thinking it's about one thing, Altman imperceptibly shows that the film's about another, shaking T's absrudly (I mean, 'T'!) pompous complacency. While the women become increasingly complex - the ploy of not showing Kate Hudson's bridegroom suggests she's only interested in the material and social trappings of a wedding, but this absence is revealed to have a strong emotional basis - Dr. T finds himself unable to deal with them as real, as opposed to his categorised Ideal. Most piquantly, the attraction of golf professional Helen Hunt, is that she is more like a man than a woman, implying a suppressed homosexuality in T that paralells that of his daughter.

Dr. T was generally considered a failure on its release, and although Altman dutifully marshalls his trademark visual rhythms, that glorious dance between off-hand characterisation, mobile wide-screen camera and fluid editing, it never becomes anything special. This is arguably because the characters are all, male and female, too shrill; because the script isn't sharp enough; or because Gere - brilliant, but slyly passive - leaves a black hole at its centre. Having said that, second-rate Altman is more fun than almost anything else currently available, and the various group crescendos have their comic moments, though the cod-Tennesse Williamisms are an easy target.


<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 .. 12 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates