Charmed, I'm sure

By PHILIP BOOTH

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 12, 2000

Women of many sorts are celebrated in director Robert Altman's entertaining, if not important, movie. Richard Gere's Dr. T is at the center of the swirling story.

Dr. T and the Women in all likelihood will come to be regarded as little more than an amusing trifle in the oeuvre of Robert Altman, at 75 one of the few elder statesmen of American directors still willing and able to make movies that matter.

Altman's tale of the woes befalling a Dallas gynecologist (Richard Gere) is not nearly as provocative or as accomplished as his early '90s efforts The Player and Short Cuts. Nor is it as edgy as M*A*S*H, Nashville and other risk-taking '70s movies that cemented the filmmaker's reputation as a leading light of the now-faded Hollywood renaissance.

Dr. T and the Women instead is a pleasant diversion, a seriocomic lark in the mold of last year's Cookie's Fortune. Both were penned by screenwriter Anne Rapp, a native Texan, and each has a small-town, closed-circle feel, although the new film is set in the suburbs of a metropolis.

Altman, as usual, drops his protagonist into a maelstrom of frenzied activity. Dr. Sully Travis is first seen alone with an older patient, making small talk while he performs a gynecological procedure. Shortly after, we get a more expansive view of this physician's world, to the jaunty sound of Lyle Lovett's Large Band. The waiting room is a high-society party waiting to happen, packed to the brim with chattering receptionists, nurses and patients of all shapes, sizes, ages and shades of hair color.

The ladies who pay Travis' bills -- and stay fiercely loyal to their man -- keep busy greeting one another with air kisses, jockeying for position on the appointment list and exiting their examinations in states of satisfied grace. Southern accents and gossipy exchanges are in the air, and bits and pieces of conversation swirl in and out of earshot, a la Altman pictures of yore.

Some observers might accuse Altman of being patronizing or condescending toward these women. But it would be just as easy to argue that the director, like the titular doctor, is in love with every variety of female: The camera and the script offer a loving regard for even the quirkiest characters.

Travis, too, thanks to his job and resultant social status, is portrayed as the envy of his duck-hunting pals (Robert Hays, Matt Malloy and former Conan O'Brien sidekick Andy Richter) and acquaintances alike. "What kind of doctor is he?" willowy blond Bree (Helen Hunt), the new golf pro in town, asks an employee at Travis' country club. "He's the lucky kind," she's told.

The good doctor's fortunes, though, seem to be on the wane. His beloved wife, Kate (Farrah Fawcett), suffers a break with reality, gleefully disrobing and playing in a water fountain at a shopping mall, regressing to a childlike state, so she's taken to a mental hospital.

Travis's chatty, champagne-loving sister-in-law Peggy (a terrific Laura Dern), in the midst of a divorce, decides to move into his home, with three bratty tykes in tow. His daughter Connie (Tara Reid), on staff at a museum dedicated to JFK assassination conspiracy theories, is paranoid that the wedding of her sister DeeDee (Kate Hudson) may be wrecked by the arrival of a mysterious old friend (Liv Tyler). Dr. T's hard-working office manager, Carolyn (Shelley Long, admirably wacky), seems inordinately interested in her boss' private life. And to top it off, there's a twister-spawning storm on the horizon, a physical manifestation of all the emotional turmoil.

Dr. T, as has been the case with the best of Altman ensemble pieces, by rights should run on its own fuel: Simply gather these actors together, encourage script improvisation and watch what happens. That works to some degree here. The characters, though, including love interest Bree, aren't as fully fleshed out as they ought to be, and Gere and Hunt demonstrate little screen chemistry.

A bit of natural magic is inserted toward the end of the film, which culminates with what might be described as a pair of endings, one unconventionally happy and one rather befuddling. It's an unsatisfying payoff that nevertheless doesn't negate the movie's considerable charms.

Dr. T and the Women

Grade: B+

Director: Robert Altman

Cast: Richard Gere, Helen Hunt, Farrah Fawcett, Laura Dern, Shelley Long, Tara Reid, Kate Hudson, Liv Tyler.

Screenplay: Anne Rapp

Rating: R; nudity, profanity, sexual situations

Running time: 122 min.

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