Dr. T & The Women
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Movie Reviews of Dr. T & The Women
Movie Review: Don't Judge Before You See It.
Summary: 4 Stars
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+++Movie Review: Dr. T & The Women
Summary: 4 Stars
Better than the average movie, Many hilarious and some serious situations. Will watch many times over.....Movie Review: Mr T and the Women?
Summary: 3 Stars
This movie starred Richard Gere as Dr T, a Dallas Texas based gynecologist with a way with women -- until they all get to be too much for him. It would have been way better if it had been called Mr T and the women, and if Mr T had played the character he created for the "A" Team, B.A. Baracus, as a Dallas, Texas based gynecologist. When Dr T's wife, Kate (Farrah Fawcett), took off her clothes and swam in the shopping mall fountain, he would have just looked at her and said "Shut up, fool. You ain't no fish." As the women of Dallas made plans for Dr T's daughter's wedding, it seemed like they were taking over the world. You couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a dysfunctional blonde pre menstrual or post menopausal woman. Mr T would have summed up the situation and said something pithy and insightful, like "I pity the fool who goes out tryin' a' take over da world, then runs home cryin' to her momma!"
Or what if the Dr T had been Dr. Terwilliker, from The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T., who had an insane plan to enslave 500 boys in his Piano Academy and force them to practice 24/7 on his magnificent piano? With a script by Dr. Seuss, and starring Hans Conried as Dr. Terwilliker! Take Dr. Terwilliker, and make him a gynecologist instead of a piano teacher, set the whole thing in Texas. Can't you just imagine Dr. T. singing "I want my lavender spats!" out on the Texas range? That would have been Atomic. VERY atomic!
Instead of that magnificent spectacle we are forced to settle for second Gere and Altman's workaday mise-en-scène. At first Gere is a doctor who thinks women are the best thing since sliced bread, but Dr T grows to despise them as their needs, imagined ailments, and, as Dr Terwilliker would say, their "idiotic cock-eyed flum-dummery" overwhelms him.
This film is chock full of beautiful and talented women, like Farrah Fawcett, Laura Dern, Shelley Long, Kate Hudson, Tara Reid and Liv Tyler, but it doesn't really like women. The film is a mysoginist. Only Helen Hunt escapes its hellish fury, as a golf pro who toys with Dr T, but then tosses him aside, just like a man would do. Dr T says he is attracted to her because she wasn't like all the other women. If she was a woman who acted like a man, that would explain a lot, Dr Freud.
Was the scene of Kate Hudson practicing her routine with the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders merely gratuitous, or was it integral to the plot? I would have to go with merely gratuitous. Or how about the scene where Kate Hudson and Liv Tyler make out? Once again, gratuitous. But as long as we're being gratuitous... Liv Tyler isn't the only one who wished they would have used more tongue and "gone for it."
The ending seems not only preposterous, but is also patronizing. I won't give it away, but suffice it to say that Gere's Dr T still thinks he is god's gift to women, but in reality women have been having babies without any help (apart from a small initial investment) from men for thousands of years.
Hannibal: B.A., there's an old saying - "The best defense is a good offense."
B.A. Baracus: You got that wrong, man. A good offense is the best defense.
Hannibal: Okay, have it your way.
One Night at McCool's (2001) Liv Tyler was Jewel Valentine
Almost Famous (2000) Kate Hudson was Penny Lane
The Big Lebowski (1998) Tara Reid was Bunny Lebowski
Wild At Heart (1990) Laura Dern was Lula Fortune
Fool for Love (1985) (directed by Robert Altman)
Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985) Helen Hunt was Lynne Stone
Night Shift (1982) Shelley Long was Belinda Keaton
American Gigolo (1980) Richard Gere was Julian
Shampoo (1975) Lee Grant was Felicia Carp
Myra Breckinridge (1970) Farrah Fawcett was Mary Ann Pringle
[repeated line]
Hannibal: I love it when a plan comes together!
Lesser Robert Altman film has its moments
Summary: 3 Stars 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.
Movie Review: Grossly under-rated, relaxed Altman.
Summary: 3 Stars
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.