'Patch Adams' prescribes measured doses of laughter
By Stevie Emilia
JAKARTA (JP): When you are ill, what kind of doctor do you want to see? A funny one, or the one that does not even look in your eyes during medical procedures? If you prefer the first one, go and see Patch Adams.
Based on Hunter Doherty Adam's book Gesundheit: Good is a Laughing Matter, Tom Shadyac directs the story of a physician with humor-driven prescriptions for treating diseases.
In the film, Oscar winning actor Robin Williams plays Adams, who is inspired to become a doctor after being treated for depression in a mental institution.
The part of the film when Adams admits himself to the psychiatric ward is the most interesting part of the movie. In the institution, he is a patient, but also acts as "doctor" to his sick friends.
He "treats" Rudy (Michael Jeter), who keeps imagining personal demons in the form of vicious squirrels, by helping him to conquer his fear with a humorous war game.
In the ward, he also meets the eccentric Arthur, who helps open Adams' eyes with these words: "See what no one else sees, see what everyone else chooses not to see ... and you'll see a new world everyday."
Following the advise, Adams leaves the institution and becomes determined to become a doctor himself, as it will make him connect to people, listen to them and help them with their problems.
Two years later, Adams, who prefers to call himself Patch -- the name given to him by Arthur -- has completed his first two- year term at medical college, but still has to wait another year until he can "connect" with patients.
With the help of nurse Joletta (Irma P. Hall), who looks the other way when Patch makes his unauthorized rounds, he finally meets his real patients and cheers them up with his clown tricks, complete with giant shoes and an enormous red nose.
He is also willing to dress up like an angel to lift the spirit of a dying man, or fills a tub full of noodles to elicit a smile, in a simple moment of pleasure, from an elderly woman.
But his enthusiasm puts him in trouble, as only a few people share his philosophy.
Although he always obtains top grades in his class, Patch has to deal with the medical school's inhumane and cold Dean Wolcott (Bob Gunton), or his roommate Mitch (Philip Seymour Hoffman) -- a would-be third-generation doctor -- who tells him to join a circus.
With the help of his friends, Truman (Daniel London) and Carin (Monica Potter), who share his enthusiasm, he ignores those who get in his way and sets up a free clinic, the Gesundheit Institute, where diseases are combated with humanitarianism.
Still, Patch's journey to become a real doctor is not as perfect as a circle.
On the way, he loses the one he loves, a tragedy that makes him lose his trust in people and want to quit medical school. And the school's dean, who charges Patch with "excessive happiness" in his official medical record, also refuses to let him graduate, accusing him of practicing and opening a clinic without a license.
Nevertheless, there are plenty of laughs in Patch Adams, but most of them emerge in moments when Williams clowns around, using his unconventional methods and crazy antics to ease patients' anxiety.
The star of Mrs. Doubtfire and Good Will Hunting is good at making odd and silly remarks one after another. The attitude seems to come naturally to him. At times, something funny happens to his face.
In the movie, Williams definitely absorbs our attention. He tries hard to become the real Patch Adams, who insisted that doctors should treat people, not just diseases.
Sometimes Williams appears stuck in roles that force his to combine his trademark humor with emotion, as in the moment when he stands at the edge of a cliff and contemplates infinity.
Such roles, however, are not new to him. In Good Will Hunting, he won an Oscar as a vulnerable psychiatrist whose wife had died, while in his last film, What Dreams May Come, he played a doctor searching for his wife in heaven.
Although Williams tries hard to take on his role, Shadyac forgets to show a crucial quality that is important in a doctor: the ability to safe lives.
The director of Jim Carrey's Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Liar Liar is too busy making people laugh that he misses this point. Patch's high grades do not necessarily reflect medical skills expected by viewers, like those seen in the popular television series E.R..
Despite this minor criticism, through his commitment to embrace laughter, compassion and empathy in the healing process, Patch Adams shows that it takes more than medicine to cure a disease.