Doc Hollywood

This movie is one of the best I have ever seen. It is a shame it is so hard to buy in shops. Michael J Fox does an excellent job in this movie and it is whilst filming Doc Hollywood when he felt his first tremor in his finger leading to Parkinsons Disease. I recommend this film to anyone who loves romantic comedy's. And it is so underrated!

Michael J Fox plays Doctor Benjamin Stone, a plastic surgeon in the big city. He leaves his job for a higher-paid offer in Beverly Hills, so he heads there, for an interview. He wants to avoid all the traffic, and takes a shortcut. All goes well until he gets lost in a little village. He isn't watching the road and narrowly misses a cow, then crashes into a gate, in the village of Grady, His beloved car is smashed up.

The farmer whom the gate belonged to, is very angry because he had built the gate himself and money couldn't pay for the damage. Benjamin is sentenced to community service for 32 hours and is stuck in the village. He has to do his doctors job there, without been paid for it, and has to cope with a variety of illnesses, including a woman complaining that her vision was blurred, when all she had to do was clean her glasses!

Life is very different in Grady as Benjamin Stone soon finds out the differences from city life. He falls in love with the ambulance driver, Lou, and tries to impress her, as he starts to fall in love with her. Lou is very quirky, she is a vegetarian and against hunting all animals, Ben attempts to impress her by not eating meat. All the villagers are fascinated to hear that women in city had plastic surgery done on purpose!

Benjamin had sent his car to be fixed in order to get to his job offer in time. He was given a pig, for his work as a doctor which he trades, to get his car up and running again. The mechanic takes the pig to the butchers ready to be killed, it is very funny how Ben runs to save the pig before it is on a plate. He does this because he knows about Lou's feelings towards animals.

The locals at Grady get attached to the Doctor and offer him a permanent job in Grady. He has a very interesting time in Grady including, dinner with the Mayer, and Lou's very weird hobby, urinating in the woods to scare away the deer from the hunters, Ben reluctantly joins in!

Ben's beloved car is finally fixed, but will he leave the town for the big city, big job, and big salary, or will he drop it all to stay with the girl he loves?

When I sat down to watch this film I thought I would be very bored. It turns out that this film is intoxicating. I couldn't stop watching it at all. Michael J. Fox does a good job in the lead role, and there are great character turns from Woody Harrelson and Bridget Fonda. The love story between Fox and Julie Warner is very funny to watch develop and their timing is classic romantic comedy. The director, Michael Caton-jones, does a great job with a typical fish-out=of-water script and the score from Carter Burwell is exceptional. I had alot of fun watching this film.

I didn't like Doc Hollywood the first time I saw it in 1991 --- then I watched it again a few years ago and was blown away by the writing, acting and all-around sweet nature of the film.

Dr. Ben Stone is leaving DC for a job doing plastic surgery for celebs in LA when he runs into a picket fence in a small Southern town and has to do 3 days of community service at their clinic as penance. His fancy sports car is totaled anyway and he has to get it fixed. Miffed at being waylaid in such a hokey place, he tries to get through the next few days in time for his new job.

He meets a wide cast of characters -- and to their credit, not everyone in a small town is so gosh-friendly. Some are mean, some are troubled, some are nice -- like any other array of people. Ben meets Lou, a single mother who drives the ambulance, as well as Nancy Lee Nicholson, a confused beauty who wants him to take her to LA.

This movie is great because it is about many people deciding for themselves how they want to live -- whether in a big city or in a small town -- and why they value what they do. It is also about an epiphany for Ben Stone and changing of his ways internally.

Entertaining little film that has Michael J. Fox on his way to Hollywood to take a job as a plastic surgeon. However, a freak accident causes his car to be wrecked in a small country town that he just cannot seem to get out of. Naturally his very expensive car needs special parts that are not available. Thus the townspeople try to get Fox to stay as the community doctor to take the place of the elderly acid-mouthed Barnard Hughes. While in town Fox locks horns with Woody Harrelson, becomes friends with the priceless Bridget Fonda (who has her eyes on Fox) and falls in love with ambulance driver Julie Warner. George Hamilton is also a real scene-stealer as the all-world plastic surgeon that Fox should be working with. A really good over-achiever that represents all the things that make Fox a likeable screen presence. Far from excellent, but a charming little production nonetheless. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

No surprises. No twisted plots. No complex love triangles. This movie is pure and simple entertainment. Okay, it's hokey and it's trite, and the acting at times is marginally acceptable. But it goes with the terrain, for this is America, this is life, this is real people.

It's a nice movie. See it. Don't expect much, but do expect to enjoy it.