Vital Signs (1990)

This is a terrific film dealing with 3rd year medical students in the tradition of television's "Ben Casey" and "Dr. Kildaire."We live through their experiences. We see their love interests, and the latter conflicting with their medical responsibilities to themselves and their patients. We see how a young couple's marriage is adversely affected by medical school, we view competition between 2 excellent promising doctors for a top spot.It's amazing that I would think so positively about a film that plays a song at the disco where the doctors go to relax and dance up a storm. The song goes about everyone falling on the floor, everyone kills a dinosaur!The best part of the film is that it perfectly describes the idea that medicine in itself is not a perfect science. We view the emotions of doctors when tragedy strikes during a routine injection of a young patient.The cast is top rate.Notice that Norma Aleandro plays a 49 year old, 25 year elementary schoolteacher facing stomach cancer. Hard to believe that she has that position with her think Spanish accent.What's even better about this film is that it shows that doctors are human beings, subject to the human frailties as all of us.

I can just picture Larry Ketron sitting in a producers office pitching this film. "We'll use a bad 80s medical drama as our base line.We'll get a director with no experience and no talent, a cast that could have been rejected from "The Hightes" and stick Jimmy Smits right in the middle of it just for fun." Vital Signs makes scrubs look serious by comparison. The pacing of this film is so slow that at times it feels longer than all the Lord of the Rings movies put together. I have seen Italian operas that felt shorter then this movie. It's partially the director, Marisa Silver's fault. Hey Marisa, can you say An Alan Smithee film? The film looked like it was cut with a chain saw, and it was incredibly disjointed. I don't know if the writer of this movie was UN-knowledgeable or just didn't care about facts, but the factual errors in this movie would have ruined it had it been filled with the greatest actors on earth. The movie is about 3rd year med students, but they are doing things that only residents and attendings can do. Pluse why is everyone referring to these students as "Doctor"? They aren't doctors! Far worse however is the acting. This cast has shown up to do one thing, and that is collect their pay checks. When Jimmy Smits is the most talented man on the team, you know you are in trouble. Diane Lane is good to look at, but that's about the best I can say for anyone in the movie. Even her one love scene, though hot, comes at the wrong time in the film, thanks again to our friend the editor. I bet this is the film on which William Devane finally realized his career was over. I rented this movie for .25 cents from the video store down the street, and I am thinking of asking for my money back.

This movie is very much like Gross Anatomy, released the previous year, only it is much more dramatic and involves third year med students in action. It looked like it could've been a pilot for a television show, except the ending when everyone disbands to practice their own specialties across the country. Third year medical students are faced with a greuling year of endless days of rounds and heated competition for residencies, internships, and specialties. The center of the story is Michael Chatham (Adrian Pasdar), a surgeon hopeful who learns the reality of hospital life as well as what is necessary to get ahead, competing with a fellow surgeon hopeful Kenny Rose (Jack Gwaltney) and butting heads with a conniving surgeon resident (Bradley Whitford). Rose is heatedly competetive against Chatham to get the internship with Dr. Redding (Jimmy Smits), so much so that it jeopardizes his marriage (his wife played by Laura San Giacomo) and tests the faithfulness of his friendship to Chatham. Somehow, though, everyone wins in the end.Diane Lane plays Chatham's love interest, Gina Wyler, who I suppose is to this film what Daphne Zunigan is to Gross Anatomy, only not so reluctant to enter a relationship with Chatham. Suzanne Maloney (Jane Adams) and Bobby Hayes (Tim Ransom) play the other two students in their third year group, who make an amusing distraction from the main plot as roommates who try the 'couple' thing, but can't make it work. Vital Signs isn't all that bad, though there is some repition between this and Gross Anatomy and moments where you are just aching for something important to happen as they tend to drag on with petty subplots and other trivial situations. They were building up to something good with Smits as the laid-back mentor and should've given more attention to just that. Nonetheless, it is still a rather entertaining movie documenting a day in the life of a couple of determined med students. Best recommended for Adrian Pasdar and Jimmy Smits fans.

Tries to be Gross Anatomy; does an okay job. It's like Gross Anatomy Part II, but the cast isn't as good. Still, it has its moments and is in the very least entertaining.