***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** 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?"
First of all, I'm absolutely shocked to find it was penned by a woman. Why? Think of a 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. Even Helen Hunt, who at first appears to be a calm in the midst of this maelstrom, (Look out! This may "ruin" it for ya!) turns out to be a man-eating snake.
Enter Dr. T: The Rock of Gibraltar, the only character with more substance than a french fry. Nothing phases him; not his wife getting naked in a crowded shopping center and thus being committed to an insane asylum (because, as her psychoanalyst puts it, Dr. T. just loved her too much), not his daughter who runs into the arms of her lesbian lover rather than her fiancee - at the altar no less, not the hordes of sex-starved and under-appreciated women who clamor into his office almost daily, and no, not even a Texas tornado. That's right. Dr. T. survives a tornado that would've made Dorothy and Toto proud -- without a scratch! He gets up, dusts himself off, and follows some Spanish speaking children to a remote Mexican village just in time to deliver a baby (and yeah, they show EVERYTHING). What a man!
The suspension of disbelief required for this film to have any redeeming qualities is going to break the bell curve. Please, instead of cursing your poor video-box-reading judgement like I have been, do something comparatively constructive. Like watching infomercials.
First of all, I'm absolutely shocked to find it was penned by a woman. Why? Think of a 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. Even Helen Hunt, who at first appears to be a calm in the midst of this maelstrom, (Look out! This may "ruin" it for ya!) turns out to be a man-eating snake.
Enter Dr. T: The Rock of Gibraltar, the only character with more substance than a french fry. Nothing phases him; not his wife getting naked in a crowded shopping center and thus being committed to an insane asylum (because, as her psychoanalyst puts it, Dr. T. just loved her too much), not his daughter who runs into the arms of her lesbian lover rather than her fiancee - at the altar no less, not the hordes of sex-starved and under-appreciated women who clamor into his office almost daily, and no, not even a Texas tornado. That's right. Dr. T. survives a tornado that would've made Dorothy and Toto proud -- without a scratch! He gets up, dusts himself off, and follows some Spanish speaking children to a remote Mexican village just in time to deliver a baby (and yeah, they show EVERYTHING). What a man!
The suspension of disbelief required for this film to have any redeeming qualities is going to break the bell curve. Please, instead of cursing your poor video-box-reading judgement like I have been, do something comparatively constructive. Like watching infomercials.