What About Bob?
Hey, Do You Remember...?
Christopher Schrader
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2014
⏱️ 83 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Donna and Carlos were both too stressed out by Bob's behavior to enjoy this 1991 comedy when they were children. They were on Dr. Marvin's side 100% and couldn't understand what was so hard about just following simple rules and respecting people's boundaries. We'll call this "The Problem Child Phenomenon". Chris was already a teenager by the time he saw the movie so he didn't have that problem (and suspects he wouldn't have as a kid either).
Donna and Carlos eventually grew to love it as well, but the one thing we were most surprised by as adults was just how unabashedly awful the character of Dr. Marvin is. Chris remembered it as more of an Odd Couple situation where you sympathize with both of them at different points in the story. Nope. Not even a little. Leo's the worst.
For Carlos this raises an important question - who are we really rooting for here? And why? Chris thinks that the screenwriter believed Leo was the protagonist, the director believed it was Bob, and that both of them were wrong.
The movie is still hilarious and we all laughed out loud A LOT, but the bungled relationship between the two leads drastically changed our feelings on the actual story - especially once it reached its bizarre and totally unearned conclusion.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, do you remember What About Bob? |
| 0:31.3 | Hello and welcome to Hey Do You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose-tinted glasses to see how it holds up. |
| 0:32.0 | I'm Chris. |
| 0:33.0 | I'm Donna. |
| 0:34.1 | And I'm Carlos. |
| 0:37.0 | And today we're revisiting What About Bob? |
| 0:58.5 | Bill Murray stars as the titular character in this 1991 comedy, which pairs him with Richard Dreyfus, |
| 1:03.5 | and reunites him with director Frank Oz, whom he had previously worked with on the Little Shop of Horrors remake. |
| 1:08.1 | Initially, Oz was interested in casting Woody Allen in the role of Dr. Leo Marvin, |
| 1:11.7 | an egotistical psychiatrist who's eventually driven mad by one of his patients. And if everything had worked out as originally planned, it would not have been |
| 1:15.9 | Murray tormenting him, but Robin Williams instead. By the time cameras rolled, however, Williams |
| 1:20.9 | was all booked up with other projects, and Alan ultimately passed. So while it might be tempting |
| 1:25.5 | to daydream about what that version of the film |
| 1:27.6 | would have looked like, it's also nearly impossible to imagine a more hilariously combustible |
| 1:32.0 | dynamic than the one Murray and Dreyfus bring to the screen. And audiences and critics agreed, |
| 1:37.0 | What About Bob was a box office hit and received generally positive reviews upon its |
| 1:41.5 | release in the spring of 1991. Most of the praise was directed at the |
| 1:45.5 | two leads, who many felt elevated a fairly conventional premise into something a lot more special. |
| 1:50.9 | It may not have had as big an impact on our childhoods as other films from this era did, and |
| 1:55.3 | consider for a moment that Oz's previous film was Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Murray's |
| 1:59.4 | next was Groundhog Day. |
| 2:06.4 | But in general, it seems like one of those movies were simply saying the title elicits a smile from most people. |
... |
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