Beyond Therapy (1987)

Wow! Such a good movie.

Why so much hype?

Strong and Moving!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

What the Hell was that? I'm normally an Altman defender in all cases - I'm a fan of stuff like That Cold Day in the Park, Quintet and Pret-a-Porter - and I've never seen him as a hit-or-miss director who has directed half masterpieces and half flops, as his reputation tends to go. But this is truly a disaster! It's based on a stage play by Christopher Durang, who also adapted this screenplay with Altman. I just can't imagine anyone sitting in the audience watching this garbage thinking, "Oh, man, that would make a great movie!" unless the play was significantly different on stage. I kind of doubt it, though. It has such a peculiar energy, and it's not much like anything else Altman made. It feels like something pretentious people might have enjoyed on stage, more likely in the 60s than in the 80s, because it's just so odd. I'm usually a fan of odd, but this one almost made me violently angry at times. Jeff Goldblum stars as a bisexual man living with his boyfriend (Christopher Guest), but trying to branch out into women. He meets Julie Hagerty on a blind date, and they immediately hate each other. After therapy sessions and a second blind date (they both change their ads slightly but end up together again), they hit it off, much to Guest's chagrin. Every character in the movie is constantly going to their therapist (the two therapist characters are played by Glenda Jackson and Tom Conti). No one acts like a human being in this film, just weird simulacra making faces at each other. There's hardly a laugh in it, and the actors universally embarrass themselves. Better off completely forgotten.

Let's go to Paris, though it could be anywhere, in any big metropolis of the end of the 20th century, or maybe the beginning of the 21st century. Let's have a bunch of people, boys and girls, men and women, all going through therapy, I mean psychoanalytical therapy, with two doctors, a man and a woman, who are the links between them all. They all are disturbed in their sexual identification not because something is wrong with them, though the women are nymphomaniac and the men are all in between straight and gay, where the two meet, exactly where the straight line bends just before breaking. That situation has been used so often by Woody Allen that we may think Altman is making a farcical parody or a fanciful remake. But you would be wrong to think so. There would have been no reason to go to Paris then. In fact the farce is a satire, a twofold double entendre satire. The satire of all the comedies we get on the big screen that try to sound dramatic and are pathetic, those melodramatic comedies that are supposed to make us both cry and laugh and often manage none or neither. That is an easy satire, the easy level of the satire. The second level is targeting the modern middle class in western societies. They have become dead, uncreative, totally obsessed by themselves, just some dead corpses perambulating in the street that we have forgotten to bury last time they opened the gates of the cemetery. At this level the satire becomes cruel with those self-satisfied baboons we call the middle class who are essentially un-occupied, in one other word idle, and they have to spend and waste their time the same way they spend and waste the money they don't even spend any energy to make. They buy some kind of trinkets for themselves that have to be expensive and time consuming though harmless and useless. That's what psychoanalysts are all about: the circulation of a lot of money in a lot of empty time that gives you the illusion of being so busy that you get giddy and dizzy. I must say it is well done but after a while it gets to shallow to really fascinate my weary eyes.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

I've been having my own little Altman revival over the past months, watching all of his available movies in chronological order, both his masterpieces and his duds. I'm up to 1987, and I think I may have finally found it -- that elusive thing known as Robert Altman's absolutely worst film.If you know about Altman, you know that all of his movies were an experiment to a greater or lesser extent and that some of them misfired dismally. In re-watching them with a fresh eye, I've found that none (not even some really bad ones, like "A Wedding", "Quintet", or "Popeye") misfired quite as egregiously as "Beyond Therapy". A farcical romp lampooning modern-day (for the time) romance, sexual preferences, neurotics and the analysts who are crazier than they are, "Beyond Therapy" has nothing to recommend it. The two leads, Jeff Goldblum and Julie Hagerty, make their characters instantly unlikable and never recover. Tom Conti and Glenda Jackson are probably the best members of the cast, as two whacked out therapists, but the parts they're given to play feel random and arbitrary. Christopher Guest basically plays the petulant gay man he would reprise so classically ten years later in "Waiting for Guffman".I don't know how Christopher Durang's stage play would read in a different context. It seems paper thin judging by this version, but knowing Altman, I have a feeling he dealt with the source material liberally, and who knows how much of Durang's original play remains. This film certainly has Altman's footprints all over it, and in this case that's not a good thing.Grade: F

Whoever thought of bringing Christopher Durang and Robert Altman together has never mixed oil with water. Never have two artists been more obviously mismatched. Altman creates dark little moody set pieces, and moves at his own leisurely (and idiosyncratic) pace; Durang's fast little funny script practically begs for a crackling speed-thru, and this movie goes on forever. Still, if you're not familiar with Durang or if you can watch this without any preconceived notions, there are some very funny moments, and Christopher Guest, as always, is priceless.