Beyond Therapy (1987)

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

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

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

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.

Suffice it to say, Altman totally botches Chris Durang's first stage to screen transfer by inflicting his insidious sense of style and humor -- which, while sometimes a hoot (MASH and NASHVILLE)-- here are constantly at odds with Durang's sardonic characters and quirky phrasing. Oddly though, there are super perfs by Glenda Jackson and Tom Conti. Funny line about SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY in stageplay is retained here despite Ms. Jackson's participation in the scene ("You remember...that English actress.") Altman's final pull-out is stunningly creative and confounding. What the...??? Sum-up: patrons at multiplex walk through door with sign over it simply reading "THERAPY". Indeed.