Dr. T & The Women

Rating:
Summary: As Horrible as a Movie Can Get
Review: The doctor Gere plays in this movie should be a dentist, because that is what this movie is like, going to see the dentist. This movie has absolutely no energy or pacing behind it at all. Director Robert Altman makes it look like a bad 70's movie, scenes leading nowhere, characters that often just complain, a "realistic" environment, and a complete lack of any cohesive plot. A half hour into it makes you feel as if you've been watching it all day. The movie is so bad it not only makes you bored, but mad at it as well, mad, too, that a piece of drek like this can even be made in the first place, with actual money spent on it, when other decent ideas are probably sitting on shelves in Hollywood. How so many stars managed to appear in it is a mystery to me. I can just hear their agents: "You'll be working with Robert Altman, don't worry about the script!" Well, somebody should have. Altman even managed to talk Farrah Fawcett into a brief "artful" nude scene, I can just picture that conversation, too: "It's art, Farrah!" The characters she, Gere and others play simply don't work at all. Here is a movie who's faults lay squarely on the shoulders of the director. If Altman had any talent to his work at all (I'm not convinced he ever had), then it's all gone dry now. This movie does have one distinction: many movies make you bored with them, very few make you actually hate them. This one certainly does.

Rating:
Summary: Surprising. Not necessarily good, but surprising...
Review: Unlike most of the reviewers here, I didn't have high expectations for this movie. Truth be told, I didn't even want to see it. But I watched it anyway, and was quite pleasantly surprised.

First of all, I would not consider this a comedy. Drama in a laughable situation is still drama in my book. (just because it's about a woman cracking up from "too much love," as silly as that sounds, it's more about the crack up than the silly situation...) It's very well acted, and even though all the characters are quite normal and even relatively unlikable, the storyline is quite engaging. That is, if you enjoy movies where the general plot line is one person's perfect life falling apart. I happen to enjoy that sort of thing...

And the ending alone is worth the price of admission. It's so out of left field and bizarre in an otherwise straightforward movie, that it will certainly leave you perplexed.

As I said, this is not a particularly good movie, and not one that I'd watch again. But I'm very glad that I gave in and watched it once. It was nothing like what I thought it would be, and although it's got many flaws, it's at least relatively original.

Rating:
Summary: Helen Hunt and Hormones
Review: Robert Altman has a lot to say about male and female attitudes and relationships, not to mention being true to yourself and accepting your lot in life. Unfortunately, he tries to say it ALL in this one movie, with inconsistant results. Richard Gere is at his charming best as the put-upon titled Gynecologist trying to remain the calm center of the chaotic estrogen storm around him. Gere's on screen romantic chemistry with golf pro Helen Hunt is undeniable, and props also to Shelley Long, in excellent form as the good doctor's dedicated nurse (no, really, Shelley Long). With all this riding for it though, "Dr. T" does itself in by dragging on too long and getting bogged down in an unnecessary subplot about his daughter's wedding. Somewhere inside this tedium is a great movie trying desperately to get out. What a shame Altman can't thin out all his ideas to find it.

Rating:
Summary: A-List in an F- Movie -- Inexplicably and Incoherently Awful
Review: My wife and I picked this movie off the rental store shelf purely off it's star-power. We figured, "How can eight marquee-level stars all be wrong?" After watching the film, we had to ask, "How did eight marquee-level stars get duped into appearing in this dreck?"

I'm flabbergasted to find Dr. T was written by a woman. Why? Think of any negative female stereotype, and this film screams it into an amplified bullhorn. Without exception, ALL the female characters are completely neurotic, ludicrously overdressed, blindly self-absorbed, and chatter incessantly about nothing of substance whatsoever, often several characters at a time crescendoing into a mind-grating cacophony. (Is this supposed to be avant garde? 'Cause in fact, it's just plain annoying.) Even Helen Hunt, who at first appears to be the female gender's saving grace and Dr. T's calm in the midst of this maelstrom, (Look out! Don't let me "ruin" it for you... if that's possible) turns out to be a man-eater. Dr. T lovingly states he trusts all women because they're "natural saints", but not a single woman in this movie has earned that badge.

Enter Dr. T: The Rock of Gibraltar, the only character with more substance than a french fry. Nothing phases him; not when his wife gets naked in a crowded shopping center and thus is committed to an insane asylum (because, as her psychoanalyst so sincerely puts it, Dr. T. just loved her too much -- puh-LEEZE!), not when his daughter runs into the arms of her lesbian lover rather than her fiancee - at her wedding no less (who didn't see THAT coming?), not when hordes of sex-starved and under-appreciated women clamor into his office almost daily, and no, not even a Texas tornado. That's right. Dr. T. survives being sucked out of his convertable by a tornado that would've made Dorothy and Toto proud and is deposited somewhere in Latin America -- without a scratch! He literally gets up, dusts himself off, and follows some Spanish speaking children to a remote Latin village just in time to deliver a baby (and yeah, they show EVERYTHING). Dr. T is Superman!

The suspension of disbelief required for this self-indulgent waste of celluloid is going to break the bell curve. The characters are all cracked, and the story so schizophrenic, I felt like *I* should be committed! Please, instead of cursing your own poor video-box-reading judgement like I have been, do something comparatively constructive. Like watching infomercials.

Rating:
Summary: Major disappointment
Review: Except for Helen Hunt and Fawcett's "stroll" I rate this as one of the worst films by a respected auture that I've ever seen. I love Altman, whether kansas city or cookie's fortune, short cuts or The Player...and of course gosford park is one of the best films ever made...but this tripe was such a waste of time. check out the self-satisfied smiles in the first hustle-bustle scene. Really a work of someone resting on their laurals.

Rating:
Summary: i WANTED to confiscate all the stars but amazon won't let me
Review: hmph to everyone who agreed to be in this film, but most of all to richard gere, whom i've actually never seen acting believably IN a film, but whom i love anyway.

this is literally the worst ensemble-cast-type film since 'pret-a-porter', and that's being generous. i don't even know where to start.

ok, now i do.

since you, dear reader, are obviously reading this, you've, most likely, considered buying this film (don't) or already have it (condolences).

look at the other reviews, too. don't let me taint it. (don't want you to 'miss out', that is.) i disagree with those who hate the ending, since it DOES make sense if you pay attention (basically, he can't escape, no matter where he goes).

speaking of the ending, though, i can't beLIEVE they put a shot of you know what in the film! this literally ruined an otherwise OK film. if i wanted to see body parts, i would order something from adam and eve or something. this is HORRID and TASTELESS (whether real or fake).

now that i don't want to have children ever, i have to say that this film also makes you want to die, it's so noisy. anyway, if you LIKE this movie, then i'm not going to say anything else except that you need to go hang out with farrah fawcett's character...

Rating:
Summary: Don't Judge Before You See It.
Review: I loved this movie. I didn't see it in the theatre because I assumed it wouldn't be good. Boy was I wrong! Dr. T is a love letter to women, and is filled with fabulous, vibrant, different women. It's so much fun to watch them all interact. The cinematography and colors used throughout are a joy. A+++

Rating:
Summary: What do Altman films with"Women" in the title have in common
Review: If you have even a passing knowledge of the cinema, then it should come as no surprise that a Robert Altman movie is by definition, as the Amazon critic above has noted, a "loose-limbed" affair. His modus operandi is to get together a talented cast, give them the outlines of a scene and let them improvise a good deal of it. Sometimes it works brilliantly (MASH, NASHVILLE, McCABE & MRS MILLER) and sometimes it falls flat, but even when he stumbles, he is at least interesting. DR. T. & THE WOMEN is not one of his great successes, but it isn't quite the failure that a lot of the reviewers below (and elsewhere) suggest.

If this movie was marketed as a light comedy and not as another Altman experiment, then it is understandable that a good chunk of the viewing audience would feel like they've been ripped off. There are many comic--and some downright loopy--moments, but this is not a hardy har har Hollywood comedy, or even a rambunctious nouvelle-comedie a la the Farrellys. I don't even know if it really should be called "a barbed social commentary," since that term doesn't really seem to do justice to Altman's jaundiced worldview. The oft-cited misogyny is actually a more-inclusive misanthropy (hey, those duck hunters aren't exactly appealing either). As for Gere's Dr. T himself, he is, as others have noted, charming, affable, and seemingly on top of the world--until his world falls apart at the proverbial seams. Through it all, Gere maintains something of his own (I imagine) real-life Buddhist serenity, until he doesn't. It's a an intriguing performance by an often underrated actor.

The film's abrupt non-sequitor dreamlike ending evokes THE WIZARD OF OZ, only with Mexicans instead of Munchkins. It's also reminiscent of another Altman film about women, 1977's brooding, poetic THREE WOMEN, which also ended in a dreamy idyll. Both seem to have something to do with escape from your stereotypical "American Dream turned nightmare," both seem somehow too to end up in some poetic realm beyond such notions.

Rating:
Summary: WOW .... what a...
Review: Why I watched this I'll never know. But one thing I do know is that this film was horrible. It's almost as if somebody said "Hey, let's make a movie with tons of great-looking people in it .... but have no real plot ..... and completely waste everyone's time and take their money."
Richard Gere is surrounded by beautiful women, and he wants one of the most unattractive (both physically and mentally) of the bunch? That part was never explained along with several other parts of this movie, including the plot.
On a lighter note, Farrah Fawcett played a great part as a complete space-case whacko .... oh wait, was she acting?

Rating:
Summary: well worth watching... and thinking about!
Review: I've read the other reviews on this movie and most of them are bad and would like to prevent you from seeing this wonderful movie! There is so much to this movie, it will keep you thinking about it for days! Dr T has a picture in his mind of what women are like, what they need and in every scene in this movie he is more and more startled about how little he really knows and finally does come to the right conclusion without even really knowing it: Every woman is different and has something that makes her different from the rest. If you watch the movie with this quote, later repeated in the movie, you'll understand what the director is getting at here. I loved the contrast between the woman's world and the man's world depicted here, and the suggestion about the importance of balance in the big scheme of things. The undertone is that woman are complex, you cannot possibly understand them, or generalize what they need and crave, and the twists in the plot repeated in this movie are Dr T's disillusion with what he thought he knew about the women in his life until his whole ideology (he frequently dishes out advice to everybody) is finally unravled and he spins out into a final "twister" , stripped from what he knows or thought he knew. And when he finally deliveres the boy in the end, you know he has to realize that he would be much better at understanding his own sex and he is clearly relieved about this realization. There's a lot to this movie, I can watch it over and over, and think this is showing how different and complex and beautiful women are and how refreshing to step away from the idea that all women are the same and what they want are the same and predictable. Men aren't always the answer and men don't always understand what women want and need. Stick to you guns. Hope this sets the record straight, go get this movie and love it!