BIll Murray Fest: What About Bob?

1991 comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A psychologist/author starts to lose his own mind when his patient, the titular agoraphobic, follows him and his family to their vacation spot and refuses to leave.

I don't get this movie. Richard Dreyfuss spends most of the film seeming like his head's about to pop, screaming his lines like somebody doing a Richard Dreyfuss impression. It's a good one though, and I did enjoy watching him work with puppets. Bill Murray spends the movie doing his half-assed Bill Murray thing. Faking Tourette's Syndrome might be one of his finer moments. And I guess I can understand how some people might think hearing Bill Murray say "testicle-head" or "bosum-beaver" or "barf-breath" or "douche-mouth" might be funny. But I didn't think these guys had enough comic rapport to make up for a story or characters that just aren't very good. The Guttmans were probably the best thing about the movie because it's always funny to hear old people yell, "Son of a bitch!" and references to Hitler are almost always humorous. Really, nothing about this is memorable. I didn't remember any of it from twenty years ago, and I'm really having trouble remembering anything about it from watching it a week ago. Maybe if this thing was a little darker, more fluent, or just plain funnier, it would have worked. It was nice seeing possibly extraterrestrial Julie Hagerty though. If that gal had more than one expression, she would have been huge.