Bad Medicine

No, not that "Bad Medicine"

Yet another movie that began showing up in the FXM rotation recently that I hadn't seen before is Bad Medicine. It's going to be on again this week, first at 9:50 AM tomorrow (October 14) and then again at 6:00 AM Friday. So I made a point of watching it to do a review on here.

Jeff Marx (Steve Guttenberg) is an indifferent student who comes from a long line of doctors. His father (Bill Macy) is a plastic surgeon, and his mother and sister are both doctors as well. So unsurprisingly, Dad would like Jeff to go into the family profession and go to medical school too, never mind what Jeff wants. Jeff, for his part, finds that his grades are going to get him rejected from every medical school in the country -- there are just too many people with higher grades, never mind the passion, who want to become doctors as well.

So Dad does what any parent who thinks he's being a good parent would do, which is to find a medical school that will accept his son. Ultimately he does find one: the Madera Univeristy of Medicine. The only thing is, the school is in one of those fictional Central American countries that dotted Hollywood movies about people needing to get out of the US for some reason.

Jeff goes down there, not thrilled about the prospect, and even less so when he finds that the student dorm for foreign students seems to be no better than stereotypical housing in poor Latin American cities: the plumbing doesn't work, there are large cockroaches, and the like. And the administration seems a bit odd, considering some of the rituals the school's founder and president, Dr. Madera (Alan Arkin) has the students do.

On the bright side, however, the foreign students all stick together, allowing Jeff to make some friends in Cookie (Julie Kavner), Dennis (Curtis Armstrong), and Liz (Julie Hagerty). They are, after all, suffering the same problems as Jeff.

Eventually, Madera sends the foreign students out on what he calls "Dia del Pueblo". Basically, Madera has selected a small village away from the big cities, and sends the students there to run a clinic for a day which should give them some practical medical experience. But really, it's just a public relations move, as the Americans find out that this clinic isn't getting any real medicine, since that would cost the school too much money. All of the prisoners, for example, have the clap, which could be easily cured, if only there were the basic medicines available.

The Americans decide that they're going to get those medicines by any means necessary, and actually open a clinic in that village and help the locals, who come to trust these Americans they think are real doctors and not just medical students. Unfortunately, this means putting in bogus orders to the university's pharmacy, which are bound to be discovered when Madera does an audit of the school's finances. What's going to happen to the students when the ruse is found out?

Bad Medicine is a movie that's funny in spots, but not as consistently funny as it might be. The basic plot about people (in this case medical students, but it really could be any job) finding out that their boss is committing fraud, is tried and true, and moved to a new location, it works quite well, with light drama mixed in with the comedy. There are several subplots that didn't really work for me, however, such as one involving the students trying to get another cadaver since the medical school can't afford enough.

I think Bad Medicine is also the sort of movie that's clearly of a certain time, although surprisingly, the idea of political instability is never mentioned here. But in this case, I wouldn't consider it a strike against the movie. Bad Medicine is a pleasant enough diversion, but not much more than that.