Patch Adams

Patch Adams (1998) is about a man who starts medical school late and relates to patients through humour. Hunter Adams admits himself to a psychiatric hospital. While helping his roommate there he notices something: caring about people makes him well. He leaves and starts studying medicine. The rule at the school is that students may not have contact with patients until the third year. Adams ignores it. He walks into the wards, learns names, wears a clown nose in the children's ward, and gives an elderly woman a thing she has wanted for years. The dean treats this as a disciplinary matter and it goes to a board hearing. Robin Williams stars and the part sits inside his usual register. The real Patch Adams disliked the film and said so openly. His complaint: it reduced him to a clown and left out the work he actually does. His aim was not merely to make patients laugh; he wanted to build a free hospital and to take healthcare out of a system organised around insurance, and that part is not in the film. He also said he had expected the film's earnings to fund his clinic and that this did not happen. After Williams's death he wrote that he was grateful for the performance and that it had allowed the clinic's work to continue. Tom Shadyac directed. It did very well commercially and critics disliked it. It runs 115 minutes. Good for: emotional drama, Robin Williams, and medical stories. Less good for: the sentiment runs very high and the film largely omits what the real man does.