Dr. T & the Women (2000)

Really Surprised!

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

I saw "Dr. T and the Women" when it premiered at the Chicago Film Festival in 2000. Robert Altman was there, as were Richard Gere and Shelley Long, two of the film's stars. The theatre was buzzing with excitement as the movie started (big starry film premiers are still a novelty in a city like Chicago), and by the time it ended, you could almost physically feel the deflation in the auditorium as everyone realized at the same time that the film was a bomb.Because I went into the film so hyped and the movie tanks so badly toward its end, I came out thinking it was probably Altman's worst film. After re-watching it on DVD a few days ago, I realize now that the film isn't nearly as disastrous as I remember it being. The final 15 minutes still stink, but all of the movie leading up to those final moments isn't that bad.Those who call Altman a misogynist are being unfair to him; his body of work contains a large collection of fully realized female characters. If they are frequently treated badly in his films (and many of them are), it's important to remember that it's the male characters treating them that way, not Altman. If anything, a running theme in Altman's work is the crap women have to take from the men in their lives, and several of his films feel like atonements for all the ways boys behave badly.It's unfortunate, then, that the one film that exists almost exclusively as an homage to women and the beautiful chaos they create in the lives of men is full of female caricatures and cartoon types. Not a single female character in this movie feels like a three-dimensional creation, and it's a shame because there is plenty of talent assembled to play them. Gere actually manages to give one of the better performances of his career as the man whose picture-perfect life begins to unravel because of the unpredictable female tidal wave bearing down on him, but the screenplay doesn't bring his story or anything else to any kind of conclusion. How ironic that the film was written by a woman.Altman has always been willing to take risks, and for that I applaud him. But his experiments in this film fail badly. After sticking with a meandering story for nearly two hours, it's as if the film's creators decided they didn't know how the hell they wanted their movie to end, shrug their shoulders and give their audience the finger. The tone abruptly changes into one of slapstick comedy that comes out of nowhere, and a surreal ending that might have worked if anything leading up to it had prepared the audience for it feels stupid.The female cast includes Helen Hunt, Farrah Fawcett, Shelley Long, Kate Hudson, Tara Reid, Laura Dern, Lee Grant and Janine Turner. Fawcett's barely in the movie; Long and Dern, while providing many of the film's laughs, are asked to do embarrassing things; Turner apparently just turned up on the set one day and Altman set about finding something for her to do. I think we're supposed to see all of these women taken together as representing the different facets of every woman's personality, but none of the women in this movie resembles any woman I actually know.The highlight of the film comes early -- it's a tremendous single tracking shot during the opening credits set in a gynecologist's office. Everything after that is downhill.Still, the nadir of Altman's oeuvre that I measure every other film of his against is "Beyond Therapy" (1987), and this movie isn't nearly as bad as that. It's not even as bad as "Quintet" or "Popeye," and I have to say that it beats "A Wedding" in a squeaker.Grade: C

Gere appears to be having such a luscious time surrounded by the film's fuzzy sketch of genteel, grotesque, distaff Texas that he's forgotten to be smug. A surprisingly spry and funny film with a solidly serious core. The slightly anachronistic absurdity of the conceit -- the travails of a lone gentleman in a world of ladies -- gives the actors room to do some wonderful work. It was a sweet film with some bizarre touches in its satire of the bourgeois.Dr. T and the Women may put off people who only look for action and a plot-by-numbers storyline, but should be seen by people who crave adventurous film making. Watch it with a open mind.

Great cast of female actors of all ages, beautifully filmed sets, all good to look at. Hudson is the pick of the bunch - the rest have even less to get their teeth into. However it is lazily written and directed. Pretty to look at and easy on the brain - ideal for lazing in front of the TV on a wet, winter's night. Won't satisfy demanding geeks, but there is a place for this type of undemanding entertainment in my video collection, for I don't always feel the need to assault my senses with effects, gimmicks, plot twists and the like. The feel-good factor outweighs the shortcomings, so give it a go if you're in the mood for something light.

Five years on since I saw this movie, I am still wondering why it was ever made. I sat in the cinema in shock. I only watched this movie to the end because I thought there must be a reason why all these A-list actors agreed to be in it, and there must be a "point" to all this horrendous mess, which would hopefully be made clear at the end. But no such luck. I completely wasted two hours of my life. Worse than that, this movie is such a insult to women, and all humanity, it left me a lasting psychological wound that still makes me angry today.To be fair, the only culprit is the script. The acting was fine. I can only assume Richard Gere and Helen Hunt did it for the money. The story is utterly pointless and worthless. The movie depicts all women as selfish psychos and, by respecting them, Richard Gere loses everything in life. By the way, I'm a man and I was more offended and disgusted by this movie than my wife was.