'I am in it for the money'

 GROSS ANATOMY (1989)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Gross Anatomy" is formulaic to a tee and nothing in it is anything less than foreseeable. That is one of its weaknesses and one of its strengths is it that it has sincere performances and a snappy enough pace to maintain interest.

Aspiring to attend medical school, Joe Slovak (Matthew Modine) is the rebellious, jocose student type - he wants to be in medical school to make money yet he's mostly an average college student. Joe plays basketball in his spare time and studies in unorthodox ways such as memorizing boldface type in the textbooks (huh?) This is supposed to account for his retention and he finally succeeds at admittance to a medical school. One of his classes involves studying gross anatomy, you know studying real corpses and the superior vena cava and all that. This is where he meets Laurie (Daphne Zuniga), who is far more serious about med school than Joe seemingly is. The study group he joins also includes a pregnant student; a goal-incentivized student with a flattop haircut, and Joe's own schedule-specific roommate (Todd Field) who ingests speed to keep up. 

"Gross Anatomy" would be disposable if it weren't for the charming, sincere performances especially Matthew Modine who ignites the screen, when he is allowed to ("Full Metal Jacket" and "Short Cuts" are among his finer efforts). What especially makes this movie rise above the generic is the depiction of the work ethic involved in studying 3500 pages of medical textbooks a week! The fact that Joe merely glides by without much effort isn't always believable but we do root for him to succeed, in addition to the rest of the study group. Christine Lahti also brightens the proceedings as the anatomy teacher, Dr. Woodruff, who sees potential in Joe. She also has a secret that is absolutely predictable due to an earlier development involving Joe's studies of a medical patient, none of which will be revealed here. Nevertheless Lahti makes the revelation of this secret so emotional without sentiment that it feels real as opposed to forced.

The director here is Thom Eberhardt and he does a competent job though his gift is his handling of actors - he loves them and we see the humanity in each one of them. Todd Field is especially good at showing how an overworked student loses control of his mental faculties. Added to that is the believable chemistry between the compulsively watchable Modine and the dubious Zuniga - she is as good here as she was in "The Sure Thing." "Gross Anatomy" is an example of taking cliches from a formulaic concept and making them seem fresh and almost new all over again.