directed by:
Stevan Lee Mraovitch written by: Stevan Lee Mraovitch, Jonathan Turco genre: Comedy |
Oh, heck yeah! I’d watch anything with Damian Young in it somewhere. That’s Mark from “The Comeback,” y’all…which is incidentally one of the greatest series created in all of television history and set to return for a third season next year in 2026, twenty-some-odd years after its last season aired. Anyhow. Dude’s resume is freakin’ long – you’ve all seen him in something at some point before. He’s the first thing you’ll see in “Doctor Doctor” as it gets underway, serving us this time around as an actual doctor, helping Molly give birth & carrying on with a calm conversation while she screams her head off.
Described as a satirical Comedy from Writer/Director Stevan Lee Mraovitch, who co-wrote “Doctor Doctor” with Jonathan Turco, this movie takes on the ever-thinning line between important medical advice, and a world filled with life hacks, bad takes, and deceptive websites packed with misinformation trying to pass themselves off as having all the answers you need. Lest we get it twisted, don’t forget that just about everyone on Earth has looked for a quick fix when it comes to their health; it’s not just the tinfoil hat crowd. As we’re constantly reminded every time we get sick, we have nothing if we don’t have our health. Oliver (Steven He) is clearly the over-concerned type…like…he’s a hypochondriac for sure. How does that other saying go, though? Something like, it’s not paranoia if they’re really after you? We’re constantly bombarded by germs from every angle, threatening our ability to enjoy another day without getting sick from something stupid or someone who doesn’t know how to wash their freakin’ hands - so sure, call him a hypochondriac if you want to, but to me, Oliver’s just being smart. Watch this poor guy try to go and sit in the waiting room for his family doctor, and what a NIGHTMARE it is! If he didn’t come into that place sick to begin with, he sure will be by the time his appointment is over. Even just watching that scene early on in “Doctor Doctor” was enough to make me concerned about my own health. Steven’s a gem, though – I loved the way he approached playing Oliver right away and felt like he tapped right into the combination of anxiousness and endless paranoia that we’ve all felt by trying to self-diagnose ourselves with whatever it was that we saw on the last major news broadcast. Steven plays his role as Oliver right on the money, and sprinkles in a decent amount of physical comedy to go along with his intense neurosis. He’s likable! I truly want him to survive this hellish waiting room. There are lots of great characters in this movie. From Ciara Van Buren playing the receptionist Mia that has clearly seen it all (and a whole lot of Oliver, seemingly like, every second day), to smaller roles like Daniel Stewart Thompson as Bob, whom you’d think had crossed an entire ocean and fought four wars just to get to his appointment – Mraovitch revels in creating a whole range of characters that all have some kind of bizarre traits designed to make you chuckle. Even when you don’t see them, like Shawn St. John playing the phone patient we never see onscreen, everybody has been given some kind of reason as to why we’d want to stay a healthy six feet away from them…or ideally, even further. Like how the introduction to a “Dexter” episode practically makes you want to stay away from food forever, watching Oliver try to navigate a world where everything can make you sick will make you wanna permanently stay indoors. “Doctor Doctor” is pretty proudly goofy, but that’s part of its charm. You get the sense that this film isn’t exactly aiming to bring back a lot of hardware at the Oscars so much as it’s here to provide you with some escapism & entertainment. The filming is good – Mraovitch clearly has talent in that respect, and I love the fact that he shows us things onscreen from a plethora of different angles – right up to and including seeing Mia & Oliver have a conversation through the hole in someone’s body! You get the idea, though – if you don’t take “Doctor Doctor” too seriously, you’ll have some good fun watching it.
As Oliver is somewhat forced to fill in for the doctor at his office, it’s not too long before he’s covered in blood and applying a hot iron to someone’s body to potentially patch them up. He’s clearly out of his depth, but you have to ask yourself how well you’d do if you weren’t really a doctor & you suddenly had to treat people whilst having a gun pointed at ya. Playing on the mistaken identity approach to comedy, Mraovitch’s “Doctor Doctor” has no problem wandering into absurdly unbelievable scenes in the pursuit of making you laugh. As to whether or not it will, that’s honestly harder to say. I feel like I tend to be a bit tough on comedies overall, so take it with a grain of salt – I didn’t have much about “Doctor Doctor” make me laugh out loud too often, but it did consistently have me smiling & amused, which is kinda the next best thing, ain’t it? “You don’t understand what’s happening here…you don’t get it,” says Nick (Guillermo Ivan) – and he’s probably right about that…this whole premise is definitely proud to be way far-fetched. It’s all intentionally playful, opting to be one of those kinds of comedies where the situations that the characters face will get a whole lot worse before it’ll get any better. Personally, I enjoy this kind of stuff, though it’s fairly important to note that “Doctor Doctor” tends to stay in the safe zone for much of its chaos. When it breaks through that safety zone occasionally to squirt someone’s face with blood, have someone vomit on another person, or has good ol’ Oliver unleash his python to pee right in someone else’s eye, that’s where you’ll find “Doctor Doctor” is at its most potent, effective, and all-out funny. If anything, Mraovitch reveals a smooth ability to walk the fine line of being edgy but not being offensive. Where “Doctor Doctor” is a little bit problematic is that it’s not doing anything particularly new and not doing what’s been done in a different or necessarily groundbreaking kind of way. That doesn’t make it a bad film – heck, it doesn’t even make the script bad by definition either – it’s just that we start to feel the pinch around an hour or so because we’re kind of waiting for things to get going in the direction of its inevitable conclusion by that point. Suppose the laughs were more voracious and/or constant. In that case, it might not be as big of a deal, but with the way they seem to come & go as this movie plays on, when you hit those drier spells where “Doctor Doctor” veers off to ensure the dramatic parts of its plot are taken care of, you might feel a little less balance as this film shifts its priorities back and forth a little too much for its own good. It’s tough…I think most watchers out there would want to root for this movie to succeed, because it never aims over anyone’s head…it’s made in a very humble, welcoming and inviting way that would allow anyone the opportunity to watch and enjoy themselves, but I think realistically, that’s also part of the main obstacles here too. “Doctor Doctor” is almost too nice for today’s day and age, and had plenty of potential moments along the way that could have pushed the boundaries of comedy so much further than Mraovitch chose to. Casting-wise, I’m happy pretty much across the board - that’s one of this film’s main strengths for sure, along with Mraovitch’s clever instincts on how to go about showing us this story onscreen in a variety of smart ways from clean shots to close-ups, interestingly organic framed moments, subtitles for pets, and more. The ending is satisfying and fits the tone of the story, even if we could more or less figure out how this tale would all play out minutes into watching. Does it do enough to be memorable, or is it simply another watchable film? Time will tell the tale on that at the end of the day. Not enough Damian Young in it for my own personal taste, but maybe that’s just the way that I see it personally – “Doctor Doctor” gets a solid three stars out of five for its lighthearted fun. |
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