Dr. T. and the Women 2000, Rated R Artisan Home Entertainment

Buy it from

Starring Richard Gere, et al. Released to DVD on February 6, 2001.

If there's one trait lacking from most of the big budget star vehicles, it's flavor. While Michael Bay and Simon West can deliver explosions, asteroids and Hans Zimmer synthesized guitar scores like no other directors, their films are often soulless shells, made only to keep audiences eating popcorn for 90+ minutes. I look forward to screening any new films of director Robert Altman's precisely because I know that the one trait that will not be lacking is that of flavor. And in this respect, Dr. T. and the Women is no slouch. Altman gets a delightfully subdued and emotionally wrought performance out of lead Richard Gere (one of Gere's first performances of this nature in quite sometime). Gere plays Dr. Sullivan T-ravis, a Dallas area gynecologist, who is surrounded by multitudes of beautiful and somewhat confused women. Being the only male in the middle of this melee of women (including his wife (Farrah Fawcett), his two daughters (Tara Reid and Kate Hudson), his sister-in-law (Laura Dern), his head nurse (Shelley Long) and his patients (Liv Tyler and Janine Turner)), Dr. T. is understandably stressed and frazzled. When he learns that his wife is suffering from a rare mental disorder that has rendered her with the intellect of a three-year old, Dr. T. has come to wits end. Then, just when things are looking their darkest, he meets Bree Davis (Helen Hunt), a golf pro with an uncanny ability to be soaking wet. The only negative in this otherwise wonderful study of Dr. T. and the Dallas comes with one of cinema's worst, most unexpected and tone altering endings ever. On track to the bitter end, Altman's decision to include a fantastical, fairy tale-like, Wizard of Oz-esque ending involving the forces of nature seemed puzzling at best. And while this ending does effectively derail the film, it can't diminish the amount of please the first 110 minutes of Dr. T. and the Women delivered. This movie is 100%, definitively an Altman film, for better or for worse.