Lovesick

Saul Benjamin (Dudley Moore) is a married therapist with a variety of patients and imaginary Sigmund Freud (Alec Guinness) in times of stress. His friend tells him that he's inappropriately obsessed with his patient. After his sudden death, he gets the referral to Chloe Allen (Elizabeth McGovern). She's a playwright and Ted Caruso (Ron Silver) is her lead actor with diva attitude.

Back in the day, I would see this as a fine minor rom-com. Dudley Moore was a comedic genius during this time. He's only mildly humorous in this one. Sir Alec Guinness is the funnier one. I was in love with McGovern and this was cute enough for me to like.

Watching it again in my old age, the red flags are waving very wildly. I can understand falling for the adorable McGovern. Those eyes will get you. It is highly inappropriate. I agree with him when he breaks up with her finally, but the psychiatrists' dinner is a mess. There is a basic problem with this premise that makes the silly little rom-com very awkward.

Lovesick 1983. Dudley Moore, Eliz. McGovern. Movie makes mincemeat of Freud & his limited & negative theory of human motivation & potential. "Go Saul", I hear myself thinking throughout the film, feeling here is a therapist who dares stand up to the stiff board of censors who don't deserve to have access to mentally unstable people, for they appear more rigid & dogmatic than the deacons at a Southern Baptist convention. And they have the nerve to be talking about & threatening sanctions pertaining to professional ethics. Would you want to be governed by such repressed stiffs who purport to be a board of censors who can pull someone's license to practice a profession, yet see their distant grandfather Freud as still relevant, while most progressive thinkers in psychotherapy have all but laughed Freud off the shelf as ludicrous? The genius of the writer who says it through Cloe's words put Freud's ideas into perspective when she laughs him & Saul off the stage with her witty explanation of Freud's penis envy theory.

A gem of a movie that should be part of every psychotherapist training program & anyone dealing with profession ethics. Indeed, the whole idea of licensure boards being composed solely of those within a given profession just reveals the fear of innovation & insecurity of those within those professions. It is abhorrent to the whole concept of the evolution of human thinking & knowledge to censure someone who challenges the wisdom of old, unproven, & in many cases disproven, methods of therapy, education, medicine, "justice", & many other so-called professions. Just look at the travesty of the medical profession that, hand-in-hand with the drug pushing pharmaceutical industry, prescribes aspirin for headaches rather than treating the ailment (tumor?) hiding within, or the repressive incarceration of youth, which some still dare call education, that is flooding the earth with non-thinking violent robots seeking revenge & targets for the decade plus of physical, & even more disturbingly, emotional abuse perpetrated by their unfeeling bullying teachers & peers.

See the movie & think about the rights of innovative creative thinkers & why so few are free to think for themselves.

If you are looking for fantasy with a happy ending, this is it.

The Beautiful Elizabeth Mcgovern and Dudley Moore make a interesting couple.She's ( 5'10')tall, he is short, She has a Mid-West accent and he has a English accent, He's calm and she has anxiety neurosis.They say opposites attract.

There are some interesting " Freudian Slips " in the movie. Moore's fantasy about being in the late 19th Century, rowing her down the river, and both being attired appropriately ( she is stunning to say the least )is based on the painting in his office.During a Analytic session she puts him into her recollection of a book,because his first name ( Saul ) and the author's first name are the same.Finally, in the beginning of the flick, his friend,Otto goes to cut his cake and puts the knife through his name as the camera records.Otto has a heart attack and dies. It was nice seeing Manhattan of the early 80's.Especially Chloe and Saul walking arm in arm in Central Park Also the soundtrack ( especially the flute )is and very excellent and soothing.

In his entrance scene, Dudley Moore shows himself to be structured, responsible, and no-nonsense. He gets to work early, asks his receptionist for any messages, and prepares his very tidy office for his first patient. As a therapist, he listens to people pouring out their unfixable, mostly small problems, and he never gets emotionally involved. He talks with a colleague, Wallace Shawn, who confesses that he's become obsessed with a young female patient. Wallace dies of a heart attack, and soon after, Dudley get a call from the aforementioned female patient asking for an appointment. The supposedly irresistible, enigmatic, vivacious, vibrant young woman is Elizabeth McGovern, who unfortunately plays her part very quietly. Since I couldn't see what was so tempting about her, I kept coming up with alternate plot twists that the story could have turned into: she was imaginary, she made a game of seducing all her therapists, it was all a dream so Dudley could warn Wallace before it was too late - but folks, just turn off your brains. It's just a little romantic comedy, nothing more. It is a bit quirky, but it's also pretty cute.

Alec Guinness has a very fun role as the spirit of Freud reincarnated in Dudley's imagination. Dudley can confess to his mentor analyst, John Huston, but the best advice comes from Freud, of course. Everyone seems to have a lot of fun making the movie (although Elizabeth seems determined to be as low-key about her enthusiasm as possible), including young, pre-discovered David Strathairn as a nutty homeless patient and Christine Baranski as a patient who constantly talks about sex. If you like your romances to have a little fantasy in them, or you'd like to see one of Dudley Moore's cuter movies, rent this forgotten '80s comedy.

This is a very fine romantic comedy, and if it reminds us of a Woody Allen film, then guess why! It is written and directed by Allen's friend and colleague Marshall Brickman, who wrote Allen's famous films ANNIE HALL (1977), for which he won an Oscar, and MANHATTAN (1979, see my review), for which he was nominated for an Oscar, as well as his earlier film SLEEPER (1973), and twenty years later, Allen's MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY (1993). Brickman's association with Woody Allen goes back so far that he wrote Allen's comedy material in 1967 for a television special. I believe Brickman used to be represented by Jack Rollins, back in the days when Jack was agent and manager for Allen, Dick Cavett, Joan Rivers, and the whole crowd of young Manhattan comedians as they were in the 1960s when I knew them all, as well as the amazing Jack Rollins himself, who is certainly one of the cinema's unsung heroes. Woody Allen owes his whole cinema career to Jack Rollins in my opinion, and without Jack, Dick Cavett would possibly never have risen above stand-up work in nightclubs such as the Bon Soir on 8th Street, as he was when I knew him. Jack Rollins thus created the entire genre of which this Marshall Brickman film (possibly written for Allen originally, with Allen being replaced instead with Dudley Moore) is an excellent example. Brickman (now 74) is still at work, and has written the book for the musical film JERSEY BOYS set for release next year. And last year he appeared in WOODY ALLEN: A DOCUMENTARY (2012). This film has Sigmund Freud step into the action as a projection of the hero's imagination, a device used so brilliantly in Herbert Ross's film with Allen, PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM (1972), where Bogart does the same thing. Freud is impeccably played by Alec Guinness, who does not overdo the accent and judges the part perfectly. Dudley Moore had, by the time this film was made, been a terrific hit in Hollywood because of 10 (1979) and ARTHUR (1981), and he was considered a hot box office property. Probably this film was set up on that basis. 'Dud', as he was called in England, was certainly no dud on screen, and here he shines with his usual soft charm and melting gaze. He was really very cuddly as a screen personality. The only time I ever met him was when he was still married to Suzy Kendall (they divorced in 1972), and they came together to a private screening. I didn't speak to her but exchanged a few words with him. I knew, as everyone did, that Dudley was short, but it was a shock to see in person just how short, especially beside his wife. He was only five foot two and a half. On that occasion, he was wrapped in an enormous fur coat with a huge collar which nearly engulfed his head, and he did not take it off in the screening theatre, even though it was not cold. In this film, Dudley's limp shows clearly, as he was born with his left foot as a club foot, and the corrective surgery as a child was not completely satisfactory. With those two physical handicaps, it is amazing that Dudley had such a successful career, and what is more, was assailed by countless women who wanted not only to cuddle cute little Dud, but do real grown up things with him as well, so that he developed a reputation as a serious ladies' man and had four wives. Certainly Dudley was in my opinion one of the funniest comedians ever produced by Britain, and his BBC TV sketches with his pal Peter Cook will and cannot ever be forgotten, so that people still roar with laughter at them even though they have seen them dozens of times. The girl in the film is played by the beautiful 22 year-old Elizabeth McGovern, in her first major film role. The makeup lady went a bit too far in whitening her face, especially around her eyes to heighten the startling blue of her eyes. But never mind, she is a vision of beauty and who could resist her? Certainly not Dudley's character, Dr. Saul Benjamin, a respected Freudian psychoanalyst, whose patient she becomes. Dudley goes through the various Woody Allenesque guilt and obsession syndromes, and does a terrific job of it. Everything is very hilarious, but sad at the same time, and it is also all very Manhattan. Most of Dudley's psychiatric patients, seen often on the couch or flapping their arms as they imagine they are flying around his office, are hilariously mad, or otherwise self-indulgent narcissists, which is almost as funny. The ups and the downs of this 'counter-transference' romance are shown as the inevitable waves of the sea of love, pardon the purple prose. It is all very entertaining and well done, and I hope that one day in the future when all the ouevres are complete, some wise cinema historian surveying the 'Woody Allen Movement', will not omit the films directed by Marshall Brickman, especially this one, from consideration as an inseparable part of the genre. Brickman deserves more attention and recognition than he has ever received, although as an Oscar winner, maybe he has a few laurels upon which to rest his comically imaginative head, and perhaps even thus rests content. Let us hope so.