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Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 16:38:21 -0500 (EST)
From: maillist@moviejuice.com
Subject: [MV] MovieJuice! - PATCH ADAMS - Crappy Diem
PATCH ADAMS - CRAPPY DIEM
by Mark Ramsey
http://www.moviejuice.com
January 10, 1999
"Laughter is Contagious," reads the slug line for Patch Adams. Then again, so is a yawn. Fortunately, I visited the famous Dr. Jonas Salk who, having conquered Polio, has now developed a Robin Williams vaccine. Flowing through my system are antibodies against random comic outbursts, "Mr. Happy" jokes, feel-good flatulence, and earnest yet manipulative manic mambo-mongering. I'm ready for Patch Adams, baby!
Robin - who's played a doctor enough times to graduate with honors from most off-shore Med Schools - returns as Patch Adams. The story kicks off with Patch, whose full name is Patch Quincy Adams, in a loony bin in the late '60s. There, he realizes if you make crazy people laugh then they won't ask you for 25 cents on the street, and while they're doubled over in hysterics you can out-run them for your life. No small lesson.
So Robin wants to become a doctor to heal people with laughter, or at least with a plentiful supply of balloons and big red noses. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the last time these items were laugh-a-minute, Red Skelton was the King of Comedy. What a scream, when he flaps his arms like a chicken! Hey, gang, it's Freddy the Freeloader! What a stitch...er...suture! If you love the idea of a Cancer Patient Conga Line, if bearing witness to the Rappin' Granny in a pool of Top Ramen turns your comedy crank, then you'll love Patch Adams!
"See what everyone chooses not to see," an old man advises Flatulence Adams. Suspiciously, the old man vaguely resembled Universal kingpin Richard Branson who, methinks, must have been referring to Universal's lackluster slate of flicks for '98, of which this flick is the crowning achievement.
Fortunately, Robin's not alone! There are three chicks in his Med School class, and he's lucky enough to hook up with the hot one: Outrageously fine, super-blonde and barely humanoid Monica Potter. Robin may be easily three times Monica's age, but that just gives him three times as many good lines as the hundreds of other Med students that are better looking and within a century of Monica's birth year.
"I'm not here to date, I'm here to study," says Monica Babe-r-onica, and any opportunity to study her is a welcome one, I say. Here's a gal whose nose is so perky-riffic, her nostrils provide a horizontal line of sight straight into her head, and I think there's even some neural mass knocking around in there!
Patch Adams, which was originally to be called Robin and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter, features uplifting music, uplifting animated butterflies, and the very uplifted nose of Monica Potter. Everything's up but "Up With People." What's up with that?
Remember gang, this here's the Age of Woodstock, so Patch becomes Patchouli Adams faster than you can hum "Truckin'," and he opens up the first broken-down-shack-hippie-commune-medical-clinic to treat folks who can't afford the skilled but uncaring louts with actual medical degrees and no funny hats. Thanks to free lovers like these, we have TV news stars with names like Soledad O'Brien and Willow Bay. Thank YOU.
Robin's strategy is to use humor to heal pain and suffering. Although if David Letterman's temperament is any example humor actually aggravates pain and suffering. Does Richard Lewis look healed to you?
Naturally, the medical establishment wants to get rid of Robin because he threatens their dress code and because he wants to name his clinic the "Gezundheit Institute," which, the doctors correctly point out, is seriously not funny. At the urging of one-time Rat-Packer Joey Bishop, Robin offers to change the name to the equally vaudevillian "A Jew, A Negro, and a Priest Institute," but only Dr. Red Buttons gave up the faintest glint of a chuckle at that one.
Robin's record is stained with a stinging criticism: He's guilty of "Excessive Happiness" and thus unfit to be a doctor. Now I understand why no local TV weatherperson can ever be a doctor, and here I thought it was because they were all fucking idiots. Sadly, "Excessive Happiness" is not an affliction cursing any member of the audience.
Ultimately, Patch is on trial for his professional life. Presiding is Judge Richard Kiley, the Man of La Mancha himself. Whoops, it's a Don Quixote A&E acid flashback.
So what have we learned from Dispatch Adams?
- - Swelling music and swelling noses produce the actualization of the Human Spirit and the attainment of Maslow's highest level on the hierarchy of needs.
- - Peter Coyote is still alive.
- - Individualism and expression are what make us vital and human.
- - Good lookin' chicks are doctors only in the movies.
- - No woman is too young for a man too old.
- - Excessive "Happiness" will get you kicked out of Med School if your name is "Patch" but earns you Indie praise if your name is "Solondz."
This cuckoo's nest lays an egg.
Copyright 1998 Mark Ramsey. All rights reserved. NO PORTION MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.
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Hey, kids, don't forget to visit the MovieJuice! Site at http://www.moviejuice.com. The pictures are half the fun (and sometimes more than half the laughs)!
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Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 16:48:26 EST
From: FTWeekly00@aol.com
Subject: [MV] Film Threat Weekly : 1-11-99 : Take 2
FILM THREAT WEEKLY
"Hollywood's Indie Voice of the New Millennium"
=============================
Take 2 : January 11th, 1999
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http://www.filmthreat.com
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"They was giving me 10,000 watts a day, and, you know I'm hot to trot. The
next woman takes me out is going to light up like a pinball machine and pay
off in silver dollars."
- - Jack Nicholson boasting about his shock treatment from "One Flew Over the
