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?

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.

I have to laugh at all the comments on this board which say this movie's plot or the characters are not "plausible".

I live near the town this movie was shot in, (I was an extra for one day, and a "stand in" for two days on this film. It was neat!) and believe me, the characters are not only believable, you can meet versions of them in small towns all through the south.

There is a big difference between city and deep country life. Maybe people in very urban areas and countries tend to forget that. Quite honestly, I know several people down here in the boonies who make the folk of "Grady" look downright sophisticated.

That criticism shot down, I just have to say it's a really sweet film. It has a lot of atmosphere and some good character development, even in the minor roles. It portrays small, small town America pretty accurately and with a great deal of charm.

The title immediately put me off. The star, Michael J Fox immediately put me off. But once I got past those 2 major obstacles and settled in, I found a little gem of a movie.

Fox's young doctor, all full of spit and vinegar, sets off across country to medical nirvana: a highly sought position in a prestigious Beverly Hills plastic surgery practice. On the way, Doc Hollywood is waylaid in definitive small town USA, Grady Ga. on the cusp of the annual squash festival.

Am I boring you? Likely, but this film is never boring, a character driven comedy with superlative performances in each and every nook and cranny-particularly David Ogden Stiers (no Maj Winchester here) and Barnard Hughes. Woody Harrelson and Bridget Fonda have smallish parts. Even George Hamilton is bearable in a cameo.

Liked it so much, I headed out to find director Michael Caton-Jones previous effort, Memphis Belle.

my trepidation upon watching this wasn't Michael J Fox. I've long thought that the knocking he takes is nothing to do with him being a poor actor. Far form it, he's a great actor. The bad mouthing is because of his success. It becomes 'trendy' to put a successful actor down.

Any trepidation I had was purely down to the fact that it was described as a rom-com. And it isn't. Not really. It's only a rom-com in the way that Groundhog Day is a rom-com. It has a magic that lifts it far above labelling it as a rom-com.

Fabulous little movie that deserves a space on anybody's DVD shelf.