YOUNG DOCTORS IN LOVE

US, 1982, 91 minutes, Colour.
Michael Mc Kean, Sean Young, Pamela Reed, Harry Dean Stanton, Patrick Macnee, Hector Elizondo, Dabney Coleman.
Directed by Garry Marshall.

Young Doctors in Love is an entertaining parody of television soap operas. It is in the vein of the satire on disasters, Flying High. It relies on audience response to television conventions, sentiments, styles of acting and photography. The film successfully echoes these conventions and gets many laughs from its audience. Sometimes the emphasis is on the crude, but the jokes come quite quickly and there is no repeating, simply getting on with the next joke.

Michael Mc Kean, of Laverne and Shirley, is the epitome of the self-preoccupied ambitious young doctor who is unable to perform an operation. Sean Young from Stripes and Blade Runner is an attractive heroine. Veteran actors have a field day: Harry Dean Stanton as the alcoholic laboratory analyst (aided by Saul Rubinek of Ticket to Heaven). Patrick Macnee has a quick guest role. Dabney Coleman has yet another chauvinist central role (Nine to Five, Tootsie). Hector Elizondo (who has appeared in all Garry Marshall's films) steals the film as a Mafia type who has to disguise himself as a woman in order to visit his father in hospital - when a
young psychologist is concerned about him and falls in love with him. His language leaves a lot to be desired - humorously. Pamela Reed gives an excellent performance as a hard-voiced intense nurse. There are many visual jokes, allusions to films, musical jokes - especially with the use of themes from many popular films. Direction is by Garry Marshall, his first film, who directed many television programmes including Laverne and Shirley.

For humour, many stars of daytime television in the United States make cameo appearances: Stuart Damon, John Beradino and Emily McLaughlin? from General Hospital, Jamie Lynn Bauer, Tom Lygon, Steven Ford and Michael Damien from The Young and the Restless and Susan Lucci from All My Children.

1. An entertaining parody of soap operas? The highlighting of the conventions and audience response to them? Poking fun at content, style - and audience reaction?

2. The conventions of the genre: the characters and their stereotypes, the contrived situations, the atmosphere of the hospital and the highlighting of crises and relationships? The passing of a year, the young interns and their development, the attitudes of the senior staff? The film's insertion of the Mafia plot to poke fun at the conventions and get genuine belly laughs?

3. The photography style of the soap opera, the musical score? The special effects? The editing - and the grand procession at the end of all the cast with the humorous comment on what happened to them?


4. The humour of the implausibility of the plot - anchored in the authentic routine of a hospital? The use of the gear of training and the newcomers coming in at the end? The audience experiencing the ups and downs of the interns over twelve months? The audience experiencing Sal and his assassin in hospital for twelve months?

5. The range of characters and the parody in them: Dr. Simon August: his wealthy background, clean-cut American, his ambitions, his memory of childhood and the effect of his parents and their expectations, their practical jokes and his inability to perform operations, his taking himself seriously and the reaction of the other interns, his falling in love with Stephanie, the various disasters in his outings with her? The sexual liaison in the operating room and the irony of the later operation? His having to operate, the help that he got, the seeming failure, the happy ending? Dr. Stephanie Brody: the attractive young girl from a country town, her ambitions, the difficulties of the country town and her going back to practise, her illness and her awkward fainting - with catastrophic disasters for restaurants etc.? Falling in love with Simon but upset with Dr. Oliver Ludwig and his alcoholic situation, his demonstrations for the interns and the practical jokes, his unwillingness to face the possibility of other tests? His assistant Floyd and his adulation of Dr. Ludwig? The spying on the sex scene? His helping with the final operation? Dr. Jacobs: Patrick Macnee's elegant style? Dr. Prang and his harsh running of the hospital, humiliation of the interns, his preoccupation about money, his preoccupation about sex, the party at his home, his collapse and inability to perform the operation? Nurse Norine Sprockett: her deadpan appearance and behaviour, her being attracted by Phil, his using her for the pills, her dancing, letting her hair down, her voice and vocabulary, her returning to her original state, the happy ending? Dr. Phil Burns and his many jobs, falling asleep, needing pills, dealing with the drug trader? Dr. Walter Rist and his earnestness, psychology, infatuation with Angela and trying to help her, his discovery of the truth at the end and unwillingness to face it? The various doctors in supporting roles? Dr. Milton Chamberlain and the humour from his being a dwarf? Sal and his family, the fear of assassination, the backgrounds of the Mafia and the Godfather, his going to hospital, his illness after the stroke, his being disguised to get into the hospital, his not being assassinated - Malumud and the various attempts on assassination, the various operations throughout the year, the visual humour with his attempts, his final explosion? Angelo Angela and concern about Sal, his family, dressing as a woman, the Tootsie experience - of being related to as a woman, the humour of his musical capacities and playing. his language - and the final comment about his being in the Philadelphia Philharmonic? The various nurses and the satire on the roles of nurses in the hospital, the surgeons?

6. How well did the film gather together all the possible crises that happen in hospitals? The culmination in the desperate; operation on Stephanie?

7. The happy ending and the possibility of everything happening all over again?

8. The importance of visual humour, verbal humour - and the particular references to the soap operas and the 1960s film The Young Doctors (with Ben Gazzara and Fredric March),based on the novel The Final Diagnosis by Arthur Hailey?