What About Bob?

(1991) dir. Frank Oz
viewed: 01/31/10

I’d never seen this early 1990′s Bill Murray comedy about a man (Bob) with a multitude of social disorders (back when psychiatric shenanigans were funny), who is transferred to and the plagues his new psychiatrist, played by Richard Dreyfuss.  It’s really of the era just prior to the explosion of medications for depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and stuff like that.  What’s funniest, perhaps, about the film is that Dreyfuss nor anyone is as afraid of the man who wouldn’t go away as probably one might be today.  I suppose that you could re-make this movie today as a horror film.

Directed by Frank Oz (he of Fozzie Bear and Miss Piggy fame, as number of varyingly bad Hollywood films.  Some of his crimes against humanity include Bowfinger (1999) and The Stepford Wives (2004) — and okay, so I’ve never seen The Stepford Wives, so what?), it has a pep and overall cleanliness of comedies of that era.  And nowadays, with Bill Murray sort of a living saint among cinephiles, it’s interesting to look back at him with his shaggy brown hair and more overt personality.

The story has a darkness in that Bob, while ingratiating himself with Dreyfuss’ family, manages to drive Dreyfuss into a psychosis of his own, in which he ultimately tries to kill Bob.  And then he ends up catatonic himself.

I’d always heard of this film but never saw it.  And the character Murray plays is an occasionally referenced archetype that has piqued my curiosity to see.  Believe it or not, this is one of those films that I’ve been sort of meaning to see for almost 20 years.   And it’s not a great film, though it has its moments, which I kind of anticipated.

So, what about What About Bob? I don’t know.  He’s the man who wouldn’t go away.  A stalker, a genial, needy, lonely stalker, who just needs a family to love him.  Not Prozac.  Not Lithium.  Not Zoloft.  And maybe that is a better message, I don’t know.