Critical Condition

A couple of months back, Showtime rejiggered their channel lineup, replacing Showtime Beyond with SHOxBET, a collaboration with Black Entertainment Television, both I believe being owned by Viacom. On DirecTV, they moved another one of the Showtime channels into Beyond's old space; I don't know if other cable systems moved channels around. In any case, when the Showtime channels last had a free preview weekend I had the chance to record Critical Condition. It's going to be on again tomorrow at 5:45 PM, and several other times over the weekend on various Showtime channels.

Richard Pryor plays Kevin Lenihan, a New York property developer who has an idea for a cineplex, but to get the financing, he needs to see a loan shark who's got his office in the back of an adult goods store. However, the meeting goes wrong as the police have been watching the place. And wouldn't you know it, Kevin is the one who is literally left holding the bag, so it looks as though there's no way he's getting out of going to prison.

Kevin plans to plead guilty in exchange for a shorter sentence, although he's also worried about getting killed by the people he still owes money to. So when he remembers that it's possible to claim not guilty by reason of insanity, he actually decides to try it, despite not being nuts at all. The judge, however, has to respect that plea and remand Kevin to a mental hospital pending an evaluation.

Kevin gets sent to Empire General Hospital on Governor's Island, a hospital in a parlous state that frankly I don't know why it would even be there unless it were solely a prison hospital. There's only one causeway leading to the island; it's constantly low on funds; and there's the remnants of a hurricane heading for New York. To top things off, a new hospital administrator, Rachel Atwood (Rachel Ticotin), is applying for an administrator's job there and is being given this weekend as her trial. (You'd think with a hurricane coming, that would be delayed.)

I mentioned that there's a hurricane approaching, and you can probably guess a couple of things that happen. One is that the rain floods the causeway, cutting off the only means off the island (well, technically, they could helicopter out, but in a hurricane?). The other is that the power goes out. Now, any hospital worth its salt will have emergency generators for just an emergency like this. Empire General does, although because of poor maintenance and flooding they go in and out.

During the darkness and general confusion, Kevin is able to escape from the mental wing of the hospital. He heads for the office of the doctor who examined him, and who was certainly going to diagnose him as being perfectly sane, so that he can destroy her records. However, Rachel walks in on him. She sees him, and naturally presumes that he's not Kevin, but a Dr. Slattery who was scheduled to be on duty.

Kevin goes along with the misidentification, even though he's by no means a doctor and doesn't know the first thing about practicing medicine or running a hospital. But since he's otherwise going to be caught as an escapee, he lets Rachel have her mistaken impression. From here on out we get a bunch of predictable scenes of "Slattery" trying to get other doctors and nurses to perform while doing the minimum possible himself what with is not being a doctor. There's also another escaped criminal, Stucky (Joe Dallesandro) on the loose.

I've stated on a number of occasions that I'm not the biggest fan of what I call the "comedy of lies", where the plot is moved along by a little lie at first and then lies have to pile one atop another to keep the original ruse going. Critical Condition suffers from the same problem, and although there are some good scenes, the plot is ultimately predictable and even Richard Pryor can't bring this to be more than mediocre. He really needed a strong lead opposite him, I think.

Now, don't get me wrong; Richard Pryor is still interesting even in something that goes wrong like Critical Condition. There are also some supporting roles that are worth a mention, such as Bob Saget as a young doctor, Sylvia Miles as a nurse, Joe Mantegna as the hospital administrator held hostage in the mental ward, and a brief role from Wesley Snipes as an ambulance driver. But overall, there's a lot of Richard Pryor's work that I'd recommend before Critical Condition.

Critical Condition is out of print on DVD, although you can get it at Amazon Prime streaming, especially if you have the Showtime package.