TY! I too thought immediately of Vacation when I saw that ridiculous car in the opening scene! This entire movie was so absurd I could not figure out what the hell was going on......................until I saw the trivia that Michael Crichton was the real author! Did Crichton write this movie in one drunken night? Even James Coburn's predilection for sexist roles insulting to women had to sink to new lows to do this--no wit, no humor, and crazy crazy crazy stupid caricatures.
Blake Edwards is one of my favorite writers and directors--even when he does movies like Switch and SOB (my favorites) about guys being guys, they have me on the floor (or through it) laughing so hard....I suspend my sensibilities and pretend I'm one of the guys and laugh along as they turn into a woman, send their friend out in style, or chase bimbos in hot pants around Malibu. But that was impossible to do here. The trivia said he tried to get out of this--thank God we know he knew it was a turkey.
Crichton can be credited with some exciting fare like Jurassic Park, but his grasp on reality was often/usually tenuous where women were concerned. His attitudes toward women often were a cross between archaic and swpiteful, as we saw in the female sexual harasser in Disclosure, where beautiful and sexy Demi Moore needs to force Michael Douglas (two improbable roles outside Hollywood imo) to do her bidding sexually. Reversing the roles may have had some proximity to reality, but not in Crichton's world. Laura Dern's character in Jurassic Park was a wanna-be mother throughout the movie--with the dinosaurs, the children....she did everything but give firth and breastfeed. Unless I missed that. When Crichton verbalized his political views closer to the end of his life, they were improbably wingnut for a doctor who lived in Santa Monica, excuse me for stereotyping, but I lived for a decade at the same time as he did, and never met anyone like him......
The only female doctor in the movie is sitting in a lab where no M.D. would waste their years of education, internship, residency, etc. They do lab tests for the hospital--a job that does not require any degree at all (esp in 1972. I've known 2 who do that). She's distinctly unattractive (unlike the female doctors I met back in the 70s and 80s, for whatever reason). And even tho she's a friend of the main character's beautiful girlfriend, this doctor propositions the main character. Lovely. The only professional woman was just trying to get laid above her level. So she was delusional. The rest of the women's roles are incredibly stereotyped--bimbos, bitchy mother, women consumed by jealousy, women who do anything for a loser guy they don't really even know. None have decent relationships with anyone. Even the main love interest is ready to take back the cheating husband who walked out on her and her son. Give me a break. "He said he's changed." Blech.
The cruel abuse inherent in driving that young women around in that station wagon--as psychotic men do to women in anger, terrorizing her, giving her whiplash and other soft tissue injuries of which a doctor would be well-aware, and risking her life and safety (not even a seat belt!) is typical macho egocentrism to which Crichton subscribed. The macho doctor main character who is a PIG, never puts down his cigarette00even in 1972, I don 't remember doctors smoking inside hospitals--I remember a doctor's lounge being smokey once and we were shocked. Ir was the anesthesiologist someone said....as tho that explained it. Last, lying to police saying you are a lawyer is a crime--that cop hated him and had every right to lock him up right there. No doctors think lawyers are equal to them. Lawyers just scare them to death because lawyers can cost them so much $$ for increased malpractice premiums as a result of nuisance (and real, valid) lawsuits.
There were lots more things to horrify the Catholic Legency of Decency than the casual treatment of abortion...the concept that a doctor would provide safe abortions not for profit but to protect women's lives was actually very positive, as was demonstrating a teenager procuring an unsafe abortion in the mistaken belief she is pregnant when it's really a tumor causing her symptoms--something highly unlikely in a hospital setting with adequate testing--pregnancy tests performed throughout the scheduling and performing to verify her condition. (Both these ideas strike at the heart of anti-abortion activities of the Church.) The role played by an Asian man was breakthrough too if you ignore the gratuitous comments about his race and religion. But the rest of the macho silliness was not the macho silliness to the Church subscribed--finding and tasting birth control pills, deciding to get an abortion at any cost even at 4 months (2d trimester), sleeping with a woman still married, then taking her from her repentent husband, propositioning women for casual sex, prpositioning men for casual sex, having casual sex...everywhere, everyone... Did they run screaming from the showing of this movie?
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