In case you forgot, Robin Williams, once upon a coke bender, made a little movie called Patch Adams. I know what you’re thinking, the movie is about a clown hanging out around a bunch of terminally ill people, we should bring diapers because we’ll be pissing ourselves laughing. Wrong.
But this movie has everything: Robin Williams contemplating suicide, crude jokes about boners and skeletons, terminally ill people, the classic “one vs. the world” courtroom scene. It also has Phillip Seymour Hoffman trying to redeem his career after his role in Twister as a gay writer in the 1950s. Wait, that was Capote. Well, he did something mildly retarded in Twister and he’s trying to bring himself back from it for some reason. Patch Adams incorporates the shitty jokes and puns that become hallmarks of post-Oscar win Robin Williams movies. Don’t even get me started on the steaming pile of whale shit that was Bicentennial Man.
No, Patch Adams blows because it pisses on its central message: laughter is the best medicine. Throughout the whole movie, Patch “Snatch” Adams was going around acting like Dax Shepard making all these sick or injured people laugh to keep their minds off the fact that they were dying. If the movie ended there, that’d be fine…but it doesn’t. Patch’s girlfriend gets shot in the face with a shotgun by a mentally disturbed patient. There was no knock-knock joke cheesy enough or red nose shiny enough to put her skull back together. Maybe the filmmakers were using this as a point of contrast or to show how fragile life is or to raise awareness of gun control and not to sell shotguns to mental patients which seems like a lay-up even the new guy could handle.
Goddard Out
But this movie has everything: Robin Williams contemplating suicide, crude jokes about boners and skeletons, terminally ill people, the classic “one vs. the world” courtroom scene. It also has Phillip Seymour Hoffman trying to redeem his career after his role in Twister as a gay writer in the 1950s. Wait, that was Capote. Well, he did something mildly retarded in Twister and he’s trying to bring himself back from it for some reason. Patch Adams incorporates the shitty jokes and puns that become hallmarks of post-Oscar win Robin Williams movies. Don’t even get me started on the steaming pile of whale shit that was Bicentennial Man.
No, Patch Adams blows because it pisses on its central message: laughter is the best medicine. Throughout the whole movie, Patch “Snatch” Adams was going around acting like Dax Shepard making all these sick or injured people laugh to keep their minds off the fact that they were dying. If the movie ended there, that’d be fine…but it doesn’t. Patch’s girlfriend gets shot in the face with a shotgun by a mentally disturbed patient. There was no knock-knock joke cheesy enough or red nose shiny enough to put her skull back together. Maybe the filmmakers were using this as a point of contrast or to show how fragile life is or to raise awareness of gun control and not to sell shotguns to mental patients which seems like a lay-up even the new guy could handle.
Goddard Out
No comments:
Post a Comment