DOC HOLLYWOOD: Blu-ray (Warner Bros. 1991) Warner Archive

Michael J. Fox rounded out a phenomenal decade of film and television work with director, Michael Caton-Jones’ Doc Hollywood (1991); exactly the sort of ‘fish out of water’ feel good for which Fox’s unpretentious disposition seems tailor-made. America today is so grotesquely polarized it is hard – if not wholly impossible – to imagine a lithe comedy like Doc Hollywood ever having been green lit by a major studio; so effortless in its satire and then ‘contemporary’ slant on the traditional comedy of manners, with a bit of screwball lightly peppered in for good measure.  Unexpectedly poignant, Doc Hollywood is populated by enough Southern caricatures to make the likes of Tennessee Williams blush. It’s also is the last of Fox’s big screen 'crowd pleasers' to showcase the actor’s natural charisma. At its core, Doc Hollywood remains a Hollywood-zed fairy tale about finding one’s place in the world; not necessarily the same as making plans for the place one might have imagined to be in the next five to ten years. In the same year Fox learned he had Parkinson’s Disease (and, rather fatefully was told by doctors he had maybe ten good years of work left in him), he gives one of his most heartfelt and engaging performances as D.C. hot shot surgeon, Benjamin Stone. The character’s transformation from arrogant prick, with daydreams of wallowing in the superficial glam-bam of La La Land as plastic surgeon extraordinaire to the stars, is derailed when Stone’s cocky entitlement lands him in very hot water with the local magistrate, Judge Evans (Roberts Blossom). Forced to remain for 32 hours in the Southern backwater of Grady, South Carolina - a town with its share of coots, carnies and careworn curmudgeons - Ben elects to make the best of his situation. It won’t be easy. Nurse Packer’s (Eyde Byrde) first impressions of him are as an arrogant piece of work in need of being knocked down a few pegs. She may be right.

Ah, but there’s good people in Grady too; Mayor Nick Nicholson (David Ogden Stiers at his most enchantingly elfin) for one; his daughter, Nancy Lee (Bridget Fonda) – something of the town tart with the proverbial heart of gold for another. We also get Kyle (Time Winter) and Mary Owens (K.T. Vogt) who, despite being perpetually pregnant, only come to the hospital to have their mail read. Homespun summer magic unearthed too by the trio of cameos from Frances Sternhagen, Helen Martin and Amzie Strickland; Grady’s ‘welcoming committee’ – as Lillian, Maddie and Violet, respectively. And then there are Mel Winkler and William Cowart as Melvin the Mechanic and Lane, his German-speaking assistant (just think of them as the grease monkey’s Statler and Waldorf in this unkempt back of beyond). Also, Macon McCalman, as Aubrey Draper, part of Grady’s town counsel and a sort of effete stand-in for Tennessee Williams who takes a marginal – if distant – fancy to our Ben.  Last but not least, we get the 'as ever' unenlightened Insurance salesman, Hank Gordon (brilliantly conceived by Woody Harrelson).

It’s a hell of a cast, capped off by an affecting cameo from George Hamilton, as pony-tailed and perpetually tanned Doctor Halberstrom, whose Los Angeles’ clinic rams as many cash cows through its front door as he can. Aside: I have known such physicians in my time, devoted to their check books in a bottomless pursuit for this gold-plated lifestyle, seeing patients as necessary slabs of meat to furnish another vacation or stately abode in the country, but with precious little in the way of bedside manner that does justice to their Hippocratic Oath taken in service to the community at large. I would be remiss, first, not to acknowledge there are a good many great doctors among this lot, but also to further point out Hamilton’s callous practitioner in Doc Hollywood represents a more common thread afflicting those practicing medicine today. Fox’s depiction of Ben Stone at the outset is well on his way to living down this sense of personal entitlement, lauding his experience over those who (let’s face it) only go to a doctor when they are in desperate need of guidance, advice and, most immediately, medicinal treatment or a cure for what ails them. Viewed from this vantage, literally crash-landing in Judge Evans’ backyard is more than a wake-up call for Ben. He can either revert to being a good doctor (a calling for which he has been trained) or escalate his already ballsy egotism to treat all patients as dollar signs: the fork in the road decided by a pair of wayward milk maids, toting their cows down a lonely back road; Ben, veering his Porsche roadster into Judge Evans’ newly painted white picket fence to avoid them. 

Doc Hollywood is an underrated film in Michael J. Fox’s body of work, coming, as it did, at the tail end of both the fun-filled 1980’s (in hindsight, a decade perfectly suited to Fox’s particular brand of frenzied comedic unease), and, his meteoric reign as one of the most beloved and hardest working actors in Tinsel Town. Appearing in two undistinguished pictures at the beginning of the eighties, Fox landed a pair of plum roles destined to secure his place in movie-land history: the first, as uptight Republican, Alex P. Keaton in the wildly popular TV sit-com, Family Ties (1982-89); the second, by default after first hire, Eric Stoltz proved a disappointment to director, Robert Zemeckis in Back to the Future (1985). It isn’t overstating the obvious to suggest there was no greater ‘teen’ heartthrob throughout the eighties than Michael J. Fox, despite already being 25 years old in 1985. Fox’s boyish good looks carried the illusion he was much younger. But it was his acting chops that secured lasting popularity on both the big and small screens.  Fox rode this wave in popularity through several otherwise disposable entertainments like Teen Wolf (1985) and The Secret of My Success (1987). To both movies he brought an intangible sense of proportion, balancing clean-cut good humor with the most fanciful plots.

Interestingly, Doc Hollywood isn’t quite as silly as it sounds. It’s also not nearly so serious as Fox’s two irrefutable flops: Bright Lights, Big City (1988), where he played a New York magazine fact-checker whose life spirals out of control on booze and drugs, and, Casualties of War (1989), where he proved wholly unconvincing as a vet in a Vietnam war drama co-starring heavy-hitter, Sean Penn. Ironically too, and strictly by the numbers, Fox’s biggest hit after the Back to the Future film franchise was The Secret of My Success; at $110 million, a far cry from the original Back to the Future’s whopping $381.1 million intake. Doc Hollywood ought to have been another world-wide bell ringer. Alas, its $54,830,779 was something of a letdown and perhaps a sign Fox’s box-office drawing power was on the wane; confirmed when only one of his next three pictures – the leaden comedy, Life with Mickey (1993) actually managed to turn a small profit. A great rom/com is only as good as its love interest. Doc Hollywood’s ingenue is Julie Warner, perfectly cast as forthright and no-nonsense ambulance driver, Vialula ‘Lou’. Daring for an actress just starting out, Warner’s ‘cute meet’ with Ben takes place near the lake facing the cabin Mayor Nicholson has picked out for Ben’s residence; Warner, emerging ‘perky bosom’ and ‘bushy’ from the frigid waters, astonishing both Ben and the audience with her overt confidence to appear au naturel. Clumsily, Ben offers Lou his blanket. She tells him if he really is a doctor she does not have anything he has not seen many times before. “You can blink now,” she adds, before getting dressed. It’s a hell of an entrance, book-ended by a performance where Warner pulls no punches and keeps the usually boastful Ben feeling off-kilter and refreshingly humble; also, from making a complete ass of himself after he discovers she is a divorcee with a four-year-old daughter, Emma (Amanda Junette Donatelli).

Doc Hollywood is politely entrancing and far more frank about the platitudes and pitfalls afflicting male/female romantic couplings. Director, Caton-Jones keeps the checks and balances of the anticipated ‘folly, frolic, fun and games’ of courtship balanced in tandem with the underlying current of seriousness, anchored to a real dilemma brewing in Ben’s heart. How can he justify accepting the $35,000 annual salary Mayor Nicholson and the town council are offering him to stay in Grady with the potential for millions, probably earned in a single year, performing unnecessary nips and tucks on L.A.’s uber-rich and sophisticated? The answer, of course, is that quality of life has more to do with the happiness to be quietly unearthed by a community genuinely respectful and in need of his medical talents. Indeed, Grady’s present practitioner, Dr. Hogue (Barnard Hughes) is a grumpy country doctor, his ‘home remedies’ method clashing with Ben’s more recent and up-to-date reliance on modern medicines. The shortcomings of both approaches to medicine are illustrated in Doc Hollywood; Ben, narrowly avoiding open-heart surgery after a misdiagnosis on a six-year-old with an acute case of indigestion, and Hogue, after suffering a major heart attack he stubbornly insists is only angina, has his life saved by Ben’s quick thinking.

Doc Hollywood begins with a glimpse into Dr. Benjamin Stone’s internship since graduating medical school. A promising surgeon working in Washington, D.C., Stone has had his share of over-crowded emergency rooms. Fellow practitioner, Dr. Tommy Shulman (Barry Sobel) thinks Ben is a schmuck, taking the easy way out of a promising career to perform pointless plastic surgeries on the rich. Ben attempts to justify his decision by suggesting the work he intends to pioneer in L.A. will make it possible to advance the art for those desperately in need of reconstructive surgery. Neither Tommy nor Ben actually believe this. But to Ben, it makes no difference. Why work hard when one can just as easily work fast and get paid far more handsomely for it? After all, he has a $70,000 student loan to pay off. On his last day, Ben realizes none of his colleagues care enough to even say good-bye. So, good riddance. Who needs them? A pity, Ben is about to discover everybody needs someone sometimes. While driving his Porsche Speedster, Ben encounters heavy construction and elects to take a shortcut off the main highway. He gets lost in the proverbial boondocks, swerving to miss two cows and a pair of milk maids crossing the road. Momentarily losing control and taking out a considerable breadth of newly painted white picket fence, Ben brings his vehicle to a not so successful stop in the middle of Judge Evans’ front yard. More angered about the state of his car than the fence, Ben nevertheless offers to have his insurance company pay for the damages.

Instead, Judge Evans orders Ben to perform 32 hrs. of community service in his town of Grady, South Carolina.  Mayor Nicholson is elated, hoping Ben will decide to remain as a permanent resident. But Nurse Packer is unimpressed by Ben’s arrival; asking to see ‘some I.D.’ and further humbling him by using a punch clock to register the hours he has put towards his sentence. Ben invests himself in his work and is amused by the various patients he gets; a woman who suggests she is seeing spots when, in fact, she merely needs to have her glasses cleaned; a fisherman with a hook stuck through his thumb, and, an elderly farmer requiring a mere stitch for a superficial cut on his toe. He also meets the Owens – Kyle and Mary; an illiterate couple who come so Ben can read Mary’s sister’s correspondences depicting several lurid relationships in their extended family. Ben is in for a reckoning when he misdiagnoses a young boy with a grave heart condition. In actuality, the boy has chewed his father’s tobacco and been given too much bismuth sub nitrate as an antacid, causing his skin to turn blue. Dr. Aurelius Hogue is carpet-hauled by Ben for prescribing Coca-Cola to neutralize the effect. But Hogue, who is quite right, turns the tables on Ben, admonishing his irresponsible ‘big city’ ways that might have resulted in unnecessary and expensive surgery.

Ben learns from the local mechanics, Melvin and Lane, his vintage car needs a rare part to be repaired. Problem: the vendor does not take credit and Ben has no money. Melvin offers to take a pig given to Ben in trade for his medical services off his hands for the part to fix Ben’s car. Alas, Melvin then sends the pig to the butcher to be slaughtered. Ben desperately tries to get Lou to take an interest in him and is rather startled to discover she was once married to an exotic dancer with whom she has a daughter, Emma. Meanwhile, the Mayor’s daughter and town flirt, Nancy Lee tries to convince Ben to take her with him when he is ready to leave Grady. As if this were not enough of a complication, the local Insurance salesman, Hank Gordon informs Ben it is ‘hands off’ where Lou is concerned.  Hank plans to marry her…someday. Realizing Lou has zero interest in him as a ‘big shot’ from the big city, Ben confesses he is also originally from a very small town in rural Indiana. She is touched by his candor. Alas, fate intervenes again. Dr. Hogue suffers a heart attack. Thanks to Ben’s quick thinking and skills as a doctor, Hogue’s life is spared. Upon his recovery, Hogue entertains his closest friends in his hospital room. But Ben denies Hogue the luxuries of their well-intended fatty feast, dumping most of the food into the garbage and reminding Hogue it was his expertise that saved his life.

Grady marks its annual ‘Squash Festival’ with a parade, midway and fireworks. Ben meets up with Lou and Hank but is quite unsuccessful at sharing anything more than a dance with her. However, some time later while strolling home on the dark backroad, Ben encounters Lou driving her ambulance. She offers to drive him to the lake where she intends they should consummate their brief affair, knowing well Ben still intends to leave town, especially since Judge Evans, grateful for Ben saving Hogue’s life, has had a change of heart and commuted the rest of his sentence. Ben can leave town any time he wants. Alas, once at the lake, Ben suffers an attack of conscience. He will not become another man in Lou’s life she has to regret. Returning to his lakeside lodge to pack, Ben finds Hank awaiting his return. Expecting a fight, Ben is startled when Hank reasons Ben is not selfless enough to share all of his life with Lou. And Ben begrudgingly agrees. Thus, in the dead of night he packs his kit, reclaims his car from Melvin’s garage and plans to make his escape from Grady before anyone is the wiser. Fate, again, has another purpose in store. Ben finds Kyle and Mary Owens stalled by the side of the road. Mary is about to give birth. So, Ben pulls off to attend to Mary, just as the ‘packed up’ carnival rides from the festival are being trucked down the open road. A sleepy driver plows into Ben’s Porsche, evaporating all hope for a discreet getaway.

The next morning, realizing the inevitable cannot be delayed any longer, Lou has Mayor Nicholson get a collection together. The town buys Ben a one-way plane ticket to Los Angeles; Nicholson providing him with a police escort to the airport. Lou tearfully announces she intends to marry Hank and settle down before rushing off into the crowd. Ben leaves Grady and we flash forward to his arrival for the much-anticipated interview on the West Coast with Dr. Halberstrom. Anxious to begin anew on his fast track to success, Ben is haunted by memories of the good people in Grady and, particularly, of Lou. He soon tires of L.A.’s superficiality. Hence, when Halberstrom’s secretary informs Ben a newly arrived woman with ‘a heavy Southern accent’, is eager to meet him at one of the upscale cafés, Ben mistakenly assumes Lou has come to L.A. to be with him. Instead, he finds both Nancy Lee and Hank, newly arrived in his restored Porsche. Hank informs Ben he has decided to relocate his insurance practice to L.A. Better clientele. Hank has turned down Lou’s proposal of marriage. Hank is now with Nancy Lee…well, sort of. Realizing what an epic mistake he has made Ben returns to Grady, reclaims the pet pig meant for the slaughter house and turns up on the steps of the hospital, eager to get Lou back. After some awkward badinage, she takes him back.

Doc Hollywood bounces along on its bucolic un-self-consciousness and country-bumpkin witticisms.  It’s predictable, but precisely the sort of picture Frank Capra in his prime would have championed, its plot bested by the conviction both Michael J. Fox and Julie Warner lend to their characters. These are not kismet sweethearts, per say, but clumsily feuding equals, despite their disparate life’s pursuits. The fact ‘Lou’ is a mother is given short shrift in Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman, Daniel Pyne’s shoot-from-the-hip screenplay, based on Laurian Leggett’s adaptation of M.D. Neil B. Shulman’s novel. Doc Hollywood is often mis-referenced as ‘breezy’ – code for just another ‘fluff piece’ of feather-weight comedy. But actually, the romantic complications invested in Doc Hollywood burrow much deeper into the wounded, shared reticence of two basically smart people, destined to find their own level of comfort in the unlikeliest of situations. A clever movie need not be original to work. We have seen a lot of Doc Hollywood’s in our time, mostly because Hollywood itself enjoys taking humorous stabs at the cornfed Bible belt. Yet, herein, these Southern caricatures have not been misplaced as clumsy oafs or good-time Charlies with a drawl. Everything about Doc Hollywood in fact, feels genuine, smart and sexy with good solid character parts for all concerned. It works and the results are a great little movie to pull out any time you need a pick-me-up or a smile.

Doc Hollywood’s arrival on Blu-ray in a new 2K scan via the Warner Archive is a blessing. The picture was shot by the great Michael Chapman whose credits include the highly stylized palettes of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. It’s a different kind of artfulness he brings to Doc Hollywood, inconspicuous and unassuming, capturing the heavy-heat, lazy atmosphere of this nearly forgotten pocket of the South. Employing an interpositive curated at MPI’s remastering facility at Warner Bros., this Blu-ray looks wonderful and light years ahead of the tired ole pan-and-scan DVD we have suffered through for decades. Applying due diligence, the image has been cleaned up and color balanced, revealing a gorgeous film-like presentation that is crisp and detailed with a light smattering of film grain looking very indigenous to its source. A few shots look marginally soft, but otherwise there is nothing to complain about here. The new 2.0 DTS audio is culled from a Dolby magnetic master that, when decoded, expands to create a pleasantly atmospheric blend in the surround channels, with frontal sounding dialogue and some competently rendered SFX.  One regret: no extras, save a careworn theatrical trailer. Oh well, we can’t have everything. Bottom line: Doc Hollywood should warm the heart with its sincerity. The Blu-ray looks and sounds great.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

0