By Richard Winters
My Rating: 5 out of 10
4-Word Review: He tastes the urine.
This is pretty much what you would expect from Gary Marshall, Penny’s brother, and creator of such loud comedies as the TV-show ‘Laverne and Shirley’. Here though the majority of the jokes actually work. Yes it’s still juvenile and crude with nothing real amazing, but if you come in with moderate expectations you might be pleasantly surprised.
There are of course the expected bombs sprinkled throughout. The worst bit features Michael Richards as a hit man going after another patient who is a member of a crime family. Richards is always funny, sometimes just when he is standing there, however the gag gets stretched out too far. It becomes redundant and cartoonish almost like a poor man’s version of a Wiley E. Coyote cartoon.
The worst thing is that the comedy has no edge to it. It’s modeled after Airplane, but doesn’t have the same satirical jabs. It should have done to old medical TV-shows what Airplane did to disaster movies. Here it just tries to be cute with a vaudeville mindset that becomes too soft, good- natured, and one-dimensional and ends up leaving you with an empty feeling. This is too bad because old shows like ‘Marcus Welby M.D. are just begging to be made fun of.
Michael McKean and Sean Young look much, much younger and make for a cute couple. This is before all of Young’s troubles and dismal direct to video movie roles. She was still considered the promising up and coming starlet and she looks pretty and has a terrific figure to boot.
Harry Dean Stanton is a real surprise. Usually he is given low key roles, but here he is a wacky guy that is hilarious especially in a very funny ‘urine tasting’ segment. Hector Elizondo is also in rare form playing a man disguised as a woman and just seeing him in a dress is amazing.
Dabney Coleman though is wasted. He is well cast, but having him go completely bonkers at the end seems dumb. The worst travesty is with former ‘Avengers’ star Patrick Macnee. At first it seems like inspired casting to have such a proper English gentlemen in the middle of complete chaos. However, after the first few minutes he pretty much disappears and this is a shame because they could have done a lot more with his character.
My Rating: 5 out of 10
Released: July 16, 1982
Runtime: 1Hour 36Minutes
Rated R
Director: Garry Marshall
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Available: VHS, DVD
Scopophilia 