Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.5

Doc Hollywood Blu-ray Movie Review

City Fish on Small Town Land

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 3, 2017

It's hard to recall in this polarized era, but not so long ago Hollywood could make a successful comedy satirizing the foibles and eccentricities of city slickers and country dwellers and their misconceptions about each other. Of course, it helps to have an appealing star at the center of the caper, and Doc Hollywood has Michael J. Fox, still in his winning Alex Keaton/Marty McFly mode. Fox was surrounded by a bevy of skilled character actors offering expert support, including several bona fide stars generously ceding the spotlight. The entire affair was presided over by an outsider to both environments, Scottish director Michael Caton-Jones (Rob Roy and Memphis Belle). Working from a novel by physician and comic Neil B. Shulman, which was adapted by a quartet of screenwriters, Caton-Jones expertly guided his ensemble to create both a modern comedy of manners and an unexpectedly touching love story that won over both critics and audiences.

Warner treated Doc Hollywood badly on DVD, dumping a full-frame, VHS-era transfer onto disc with no cleanup and not even a trailer accompanying it. Not until 2016 was the film available on home video in its original aspect ratio, when the Warner Archive Collection issued a widescreen DVD derived from a ten-year-old 1080i transfer created for broadcast. The response to that release was so favorable that WAC fast-tracked the film's Blu-ray release. The charms of Doc Hollywood are now available in a superb new HD edition for fans to revisit and new viewers to discover.

Fox plays Dr. Ben Stone, who is finishing a residency in a Washington, D.C. E.R. and has big plans for the future. He's driving to Los Angeles to interview with a fashionable plastic surgeon named Halberstrom (George Hamilton, in what amounts to an extended cameo). Dr. Halberstrom interviews hundreds of candidates every year, but Ben heads west with the boundless confidence of a Type A achiever who has never yet missed his goal.

But Ben's plans are foiled by a traffic mishap that leaves him stranded in Grady, South Carolina, the self-proclaimed Squash Capital of the South, where the curmudgeon of a town doctor, Hogue (Barnard Hughes), is headed toward retirement (or the grave) and the perpetually jolly mayor, Nick Nicholson (David Ogden Stiers), treats Ben's appearance as a sign from the powers that be. As the mayor and the townspeople employ every trick in the book to delay Ben's departure, the young hotshot sees his dream of plastic surgery nirvana slipping ever further from his grasp, snatched away by a potent mixture of Southern hospitality and small-town guile.

It's not as if Grady lacks appeal. The mayor is a winning sort; his comely daughter, Nancy Lee (Bridget Fonda), is positively ferocious in declaring her romantic availability; the city council is eccentric but friendly; and a trio of older town women (Frances Sternhagen, Helen Martin and Amzie Strickland) provide food, counsel and a quilt stitched just for Ben. The local car mechanic, Melvin (Mel Winkler), loves to tweak the new doctor, but it turns out that he really can fix just about anything, including Ben's disabled vehicle. Even the sniping of Dr. Hogue and the hostile glare from Nurse Packer (Eyde Byrde), who's a paragon of disapproval, have their perverse appeal.

But the most powerful draw that Grady exercises on the young doctor is also the least expected. Vialula or "Lou" (Julie Warner) is the ambulance driver for the local clinic, and her entrance to the film is its single most famous scene, because she isn't wearing a stitch. (I'd love to include it in the screenshots, but Blu-ray.com's "no nudity" policy prevents it.) Lou's ready smile masks a complicated past, and she uses her sex appeal like a weapon, alternately drawing Ben toward her and pushing him away, because she knows, as he does, that any connection between them will be fleeting. That's certainly the concern of insurance salesman Hank Gordon (Woody Harrelson), whose unrequited love for Lou is an open secret, like everything else in Grady. ("Can't poop in this town without everyone knowing what color it is", Lou observes.) Harrelson's performance is the most broadly comic in a film filled with almost-over-the-top portrayals, and it's to the actor's credit that he so effectively walks a fine line between the pathos of Hank's predicament and the farce of his silly behavior.

Doc Hollywood's script is filled with entertaining comic details, including the array of oddball patients that Ben Stone has to treat (one family comes just to have their letters read to them), the pig of which he finds himself an unwitting owner after he receives it as a form of payment, and the peculiar costumes in which the townspeople array themselves for Grady's annual festival. But none of these goofy riffs can hold a candle to the Beverly Hills headquarters of Dr. Halberstrom, when Ben finally (finally!) gets his shot at an interview. The operating rooms are color-coded to the hues of different fruits, and a huge portrait of Halberstrom gazes down on each one (and every portrait is different). The lobby is adorned with the silhouetted figures of live performers assuming different positions, and the doctor himself is a ruthless mercenary who's more focused on his tee-off time than his patients. After ninety minutes of country satire, Doc Hollywood saves its most savage caricature for Ben Stone's coveted destination—which tells you everything you need to know about where the film's true sympathies lie.

Doc Hollywood Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Doc Hollywood was photographed by Michael Chapman, who has a cameo as the operator of a traveling carnival's shooting gallery. It's an apt role for a cinematographer better known for the urban grit of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull than for gentle southern countrysides. Chapman can do beautifully stylized lighting, as he has for Scorsese, but he can also create unobtrusive, self-effacing imagery that tells a story without calling attention to itself. Doc Hollywood is a fine example of the latter.

As noted above, Doc Hollywood was released on DVD in a full-frame, VHS-vintage transfer that, for many years, was the best available presentation on home video. The success of a widescreen MOD DVD in 2016 prompted the Warner Archive Collection to expedite the film's Blu-ray release, which required a fresh scan of an interpositive, performed at 2K by Warner's Motion Picture Imaging facility. MPI's color correction was guided by reference to an original answer print on low-fade stock, followed by WAC's customary thorough cleaning to remove dirt, scratches and print damage. The resulting Blu-ray image is beautifully film-like and impressively sharp and detailed, with excellent blacks and an expressive palette that does equal justice to the greenery of Grady (played by the Florida town of Micanopy) and to Dr. Halberstrom's preciously decorated clinic, where none of the colors remotely resembles anything found in nature. The eccentric details of Grady and its inhabitants are intricately depicted, and the nighttime scenes, including a crucial encounter between Ben and Lou on a peaceful lake (see screenshot 25), feature deep and solid blacks. The film's grain pattern is naturally and finely resolved.

WAC has mastered Doc Holliday on Blu-ray at its usual high target bitrate of just under 35 Mbps.

Doc Hollywood Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Doc Hollywood's original stereo track has been taken from the Dolby magnetic master and encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. WAC was pleased to discover, when it reviewed the mags, that the track was pristine and required no cleaning or re-EQ. When played through a surround decoder, the soundtrack expands pleasantly into the surrounds, giving breathing space to Carter Burwell's ingratiating romantic score (with key assists from Sergei Prokoviev and Patsy Kline, among others). The dialogue is clearly rendered and natural-sounding. Doc Hollywood doesn't have any big audio effects; even the auto crack-up that strands Ben Stone is played lightly for laughs, and a later collision sounds almost cartoonish. The soundtrack renders these effectively, along with the diverse sights and sounds of Grady.

Doc Hollywood Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only extra is a trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:57), but that's more than appeared on Warner's 1998 DVD.

Doc Hollywood Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Doc Hollywood is a fable about discovering yourself and finding your place in life, which isn't necessarily the place you first imagined. Love is part of that equation, but only part, which makes Doc Hollywood one of those rare romantic comedies that's about something more than a meet-cute, after which the couple has to overcome obstacles before finally coming together. The film is full of tiny memorable details like Dr. Halberstrom's ponytail, which is identical to the one sported by the maître d' at a pretentious Beverly Hills restaurant (played by director Caton-Jones). The film is a gem in Warner's library, and it's finally received the first-class treatment it deserves. Highly recommended.