Bad Medicine (1985)

Best movie of this year hands down!

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Blistering performances.

Jeff Marx (Steve Guttenberg) doesn't have good enough marks to get into any American medical school. He's a disappointment to his doctor family. His father gets him into medical school "somewhat in central America". It's a run-down backwards school. Cookie Katz (Julie Kavner), Dennis Gladstone (Curtis Armstrong) and Liz Parker (Julie Parker) are some of the students. Dr. Ramón Madera (Alan Arkin) is the head of the school who is taken with Liz.It's one of Guttenberg's bad movie during the height of his popularity. The script has nothing particularly funny. Director Harvey Miller is at the end of his career. His style of comedy may be outdated. It's relying solely on Guttenberg and he's not up to the job to create something out of nothing. The movie has some good comedic actors like Arkin and Gilbert Gottfried. It's not dark enough to be a black comedy. The good cast is wasted by this broad laughless comedy.

You'd have to be a fan of farces to like this. It has some novel ideas, such as illegally obtaining a fresh cadaver that has to be transported from the city morgue to the school, while rigor mortis is beginning to set in. Alan Arkin has a secondary, not a starring, role. He brings more to the part than the writer gave him. Steve Guttenberg is surprisingly good as the son of a doctor who can't get into an American medical school, or even a first or second grade foreign one. Curtis Armstrong, in particular, is terrific in his medical student role. Over all, however, this is strictly a B movie. Julie Haggerty is terrible as the glamorous student with whom the school director (Arkin) is enamored. There is nothing alluring about her looks, and her approach to comedy acting is out of sync with the rest of the cast's.

Steve Guttenberg, the comedic actor who hammed it up with such goofball roles in films like "Police Academy", "Short Circuit" and "Three Men And A Baby" has the lead in one of his few non-series films. Whew. It's a very good thing that a film this bad wasn't reduced to making sequels. One is bad enough.

Putrid comedy about a medical school where the cross-cultural transition is complicated by idiot students and curriculum. Embarrassing misfire for Arkin, who is horrible behind what is either a Mexican accent...or Jewish, whereas it would be a dead on impression of Jackie Mason.