Detroit is manic and diluted

DOCTOR DETROIT (1983)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

There is always room for a comedic take on mistaken identity, and all the pratfalls and comic possibilities it can offer. "Doctor Detroit" doesn't fit in and doesn't even try to. The movie is spirited technically in terms of Dan Aykroyd's performance, who will do anything for a laugh, but it has no real pizazz otherwise. It is a labored effort that plays it either too straight or not comical enough.

Aykroyd is Clifford Skridlow, a professor of comparative literature, a snoozer of a class. He power walks 6 miles everyday to the Monroe College where he teaches, an institution that is about to be shut due to limited funds. Clifford frequents his favorite restaurant where he meets a classy pimp named Smooth Walker (Howard Hesseman, in an odd bit of casting) who along with his four prostitutes try to coax Clifford into becoming the fictitious Doctor Detroit, the most dangerous man from Michigan. Smooth Walker owes money to Ma (Kate Murtaugh), the most dangerous mob boss in Chicago so in order to get her off his back, he creates Doctor Detroit, a fictitious partner. Everybody's name sound like a liquor label in this movie.

The first two-thirds of "Doctor Detroit" are dull and left me in laughless despair. The problem is the movie has no engine to rev it up. The other problem is Aykroyd plays the role of a dapper professor who has the time of his life with Smooth Walker and the women, but there are no consequences. When he arrives home to his father after a night of binge drinking and one toke too many, he looks as if he just came from a four-hour shift at Denny's. There is no momentum and the whole Chicago nightlife montage lacks purpose. After one threatens to doze off, Clifford is suddenly Doctor Detroit and we wonder why he is going through with it and for whose sake. I had said earlier that I had high hopes for a case of mistaken identity but that is not the case with the plot of the film. Instead, Clifford knows has to be Doctor Detroit and does it as if it is his duty since Smooth Walker skips town. Huh?

The last third of the film has some laughs but there is no tone and no real energy (despite a brief performance by James Brown). Aykroyd gives it all he can give but his whole life of the party act drained me out. This is the first comedy I can remember seeing where it exhausted me from a lack of laughs.

Footnote: Look fast for Glenne Headly as a student in the Comparative Lit. class.