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What About Bob? Movie Review

What About Bob? is a 1991 comedy film directed by Frank Oz and starring Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss. It’s a very dated movie that is more annoying than funny.

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“I want some peace and quite!

Well, I’ll be quiet.

I’ll be peace!“

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Leo Marvin, a renowned psychiatrist finds one of his new patients Bob, extremely annoying. To add to his misery, Bob follows Leo to seek counseling when he is on a summer vacation with his family. This is one of those movies that are so implausible and so ridiculous that they only could have been released during the eighties and early nineties. Not a single plot point here made any sense, which was frustrating to watch.

So, what you have here is basically a mentally challenged man at whom we are supposed to laugh as audience. That in and of itself was very archaic. Even worse, that man is obviously crazy and yet they invite him to stay over and sleep in their child’s room. It is these moments that ask that you dispend your disbelief way too much that made the movie unappealing to me.

The performances are also way over-the-top. Well, Richard Dreyfuss was too theatrical in the third act, but before that he was actually terrific and his performance in that section of the film was easily the film’s only saving grace. It is worth seeing just for him. His subtle mannerisms and facial expressions are priceless.

Bill Murray fared much worse. This is by far one of his most annoying and one of his worst roles. The character is more obnoxious than endearing and Murray was so over-the-top that he was borderline cartoonish at times. As for the other family members, they got some nice moments, but overall this was your typical movie from the period where the family falls in love with a ridiculously loud and obnoxious person for unbeknownst reasons to me.

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What About Bob? actually started off really strong. The first couple of encounters between the two men were really amusing and even funny, but then the movie went into full-on Looney Tunes territory and not a funny cartoon at that. The ending was just horrendous in its hysterics. It just went off the rails in its third act and it never recovered. The humor here is fine at first, but repetitious and one-note down the line.