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Richard Gere plays Sullivan Travis, a Dallas OB-GYN with so many beauties lined up to see him you’d think he was Ben Affleck. He makes every woman in his care feel truly special, and can manage the cacophonous parade office until things in his own life begin falling apart. His wife (Farrah Fawcett) goes certifiably insane under the pressures of affluence; his divorced alcoholic sister-in-law (Laura Dern) moves with her three small daughters into his Martha-Stewart-on-laudanum home; his elder daughter (Kate Hudson, looking much more like mom Goldie Hawn than she does in Almost Famous), cute enough to make the Cowboys’ cheer squad but not smart enough to get on the calendar (she failed the written exam), has jeopardized her impending event-scale wedding by naming her former lesbian lover (Liv Tyler) maid of honor; his younger daughter (Tara Reid) is way too happy working at The Conspiracy Museum, where she gives guided tours of the Grassy Knoll; his invaluable office manager (Shelley Long) is infatuated with him; and he’s fallen in love with his country club’s new golf pro (Helen Hunt).
This estrogen-fest cartoon would all be terribly cliché, not to mention condescending, if it weren’t directed by Robert Altman, who loves big multi-character challenges, and written by a woman (Anne Rapp, who also wrote Altman’s last film, Cookie’s Fortune). The audience I saw it with leaned toward the mature, and double X-chrome, portion of the filmgoing spectrum, but they seemed to enjoy it a lot. Or they did until the phantasmic, overly clinical ending, which didn’t strain credulity so much as run it through a wood chipper several times. It certainly left them talking. (Now and then cable network AMC runs the amazing 1952 film The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T., a cautionary tale for every young boy who was ever forced to take piano lessons. I mention that now not only because its title would have been most appropriate to this movie also, but as a reminder that Ron Howard’s upcoming Carreyfication of The Grinch isn’t the first cinematic outing for Dr. Seuss, who co-wrote 5000 Fingers.) B-
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