Beyond Therapy

USA / 1987 / 93 min / English / Comedy
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Juie Hagerty, Christopher Guest, Glenda Jackson
The Skinny: a bi-comedy of tragic proportions
Plato Score: D

Plato Says:

Some comedies have you sputtering out your food from howls of laughter, while others create a knowing smile as they pummel you with joke after joke. This film does neither of the above.

Robert Altman’s Beyond Therapy, is a beyond absurd version of Christopher Durang’s play. It’s a classic farce: replete with inappropriate relationships, outlandish situations, over-the-top acting and even a revolving door.  And while all the right elements are there on paper, nothing really comes together apart from an occasional chortle.

Bruce (Goldblum) is a bisexual man in transition from his old male lover Bob (Guest, playing a too-serious version of Corky St. Clair) to a neurotic female paramour, Prudence (Hagerty, an equally un-silly version of her Airplane ditzes). Everyone is in therapy with the same two incompetent therapists, yet they make no progress as the whole cast have it out in with the entire staff of a french restaurant.

There are some witty moments but it’s hard to know whether to chalk it up to the original script or to the film production—either way, it’s definitely not enough for 93 minutes. What is unique is a bisexual character in the male lead (who is not a vampire, after all). Gay, straight, bi: all of it is fucked up in this world and therapy seems to be of no help.

Christopher Durang has gone on record stating his unhappiness with the adaptation, saying that Altman rewrote his original script and threw “the psychological underpinnings out the window.” It makes it more heartbreaking knowing that the original broadway version featured Lithgow and Dianne Wiest—can you imagine?!

Altman’s usual genius of overlapping audio, slow zooms and shifting perspectives is a sad echo of his work from the 70s or 90s; yet it should be noted that Glenda Jackson is oddly compelling as the homophobic, sex-crazed therapist.

While the film does a good job in sending up contemporary moirés as well as taking a strip out of psychotherapy and bi-/homo-phobia, the end result is more of a trombone waah-waah and not so much pie-in-the-face guffaws.