“The healthcare system is collapsing!”

Justin’s rating: Time of death… two seconds after watching this.

Justin’s review: I kind of feel a little bad for Dave Foley’s movie career. The guy is legitimately funny stuff, but he’s stumbled into some of the strangest situations. His 1997 film The Wrong Guy should be on everyone’s “best comedies of the ’90s” lists save for the fact that it barely poked its head out of Canada. And 2004’s White Coats (AKA Intern Academy) was virtually unseen in Canada, thanks to a non-existent marketing budget.

Written and directed by Strange Brew’s Dave Thomas and featuring Foley, Matt Frewer, and Dan Aykroyd, White Coats is all about a group of medical misfits at “the worst teaching hospital in the system.” Oh, and our lead is a young, brash intern who talks to us via inner narration.

Yes, Scrubs comparisons are inevitable here, especially since that show was running at the time. It most definitely does not help any.

Unfortunately, this is no Scrubs. Scrubs mixed jokes, character, imagination, and smart writing together in a delightful blend. White Coats is instead trying to be Police Academy two decades later. There is not a single low-hanging comedic fruit that it does not pluck, and that involves every single joke about people going to the hospital for stuff shoved up their behinds. The comedy is so broad that I started praying for anything semi-clever.

That prayer went unanswered.

Our narrating protagonist Mike is an underperforming basket case whose doctor parents pulled strings to get him into the program. Naturally, he freaks out in surgery, when talking to families of the deceased, when a woman is going into labor, and so on. There’s no person here to bond with, just a walking disaster zone.

Who else do we have? Well, there’s the laaaaaaadies man who’s supposed to be the cutest intern but he looks like Devon Sawa’s third stunt double. There’s a couple of walking racial stereotypes (does Canada have racism?), a girl who develops a bad reputation, and plenty of exasperated nurses. The more famous older actors are given precious little to work with, showing up to be glorified cameos.

Despite being stocked with plenty of Canadian talent, nothing clicks in White Coats. It’s not “wacky.” It’s not “zany.” It can’t make us care about these misfits trying to save a failing hospital that all of them, several times over, have said that they hated. So you know what? Maybe Canada was right to bury this. I shall reinter it and say the solemn words to send it to eternal rest.

Intermission!

• 50% failure rate for interns? That seems a tad high for people this far into their program.
• Could’ve done without seeing the doll, to be honest
• “I just love cutting people up.”
• “Do you know who the father is?” “No, who?”
• That surgery got intense and shouty
• The honor system requires coffee