Word: doc
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...have been pummeled with do-gooder didacticism. Calves are good (City Slickers). So are dogs (101 Dalmatians). Men, of course, are baaad (Terminator 2, Thelma & Louise), unless they are ghetto fathers (Boyz N the Hood), in which case women are bad. Physicians need remedial courses in niceness (The Doctor, Doc Hollywood). And lawyers, should they care to join the human race, need a shot in the head (Regarding Henry). Some summer! Whether the star was Arnold Schwarzenegger or Harrison Ford, you couldn't tell the players without a report card...
Aside from the aesthetics of Dorm Crew, there were other, more positive lessons in topics like redistribution of wealth. I appreciate the people who bequeathed me posters and postcards, a pair of Doc Martens shoes and a Boston Bruins jersey. And I also appreciate the large paycheck...
...come a passel of fellows on their onerous journey toward becoming more sensitive souls. They take their cue from Harrison Ford, the selfish lawyer in Regarding Henry, who gets a shot in the head and suddenly feels so darned . . . human. But the newer films go a step farther. In Doc Hollywood and The Doctor, the ones in need of redemption are good guys...
Doctors, even. At the start of both films, the physicians are Doc Jollygoods -- more than capable at their life-and-death jobs, if a bit on the prima donna side. They hardly seem in need of comeuppance, but they get it. In Doc Hollywood, an ambitious young man (Michael J. Fox) with plans to become a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon gets stuck in a small Southern town and soon learns how shallow are his dreams of wealth, prestige and comfort. In The Doctor, a heart surgeon (William Hurt) contracts throat cancer and finds he must endure the impersonal hospital "care...
...Doc Hollywood comes down with a long siege of the cutes, languishing in the Brigadoon innocence of its cheerful folkways. And The Doctor, after a good hour or so, goes all dithery -- devoutly Californian -- as Hurt discovers the meaning of life by dancing in the desert with a terminally ill patient (Elizabeth Perkins). He resolves to support another patient's rightful claim in a malpractice suit. This redemptive ploy, also used in Regarding Henry, must be Hollywood's new prescription for wellness: to atone for one's success...