Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

I actually love this movie. I used to watch it over and over, back in the old satellite days, lol. The concept and storyline aren't ones that have been remade time and time again. When I still use quotes today from a film I first watched over 25 years ago, it's a good one! Michael Keaton and Peter Boyle are especially hilarious in this. If you like Michael Keaton in his goofier roles, you'll enjoy this one immensely.

I wanted to get with this one, really I did, if only because the cast sounded so promising -- Peter Boyle as a religious fanatic, Michael Keaton as a psychopath, Christopher Loyd as an up-tight obsessive-compulsive, Milo O'Shea as the head honcho of the private psychiatric hospital they escape from, Lorraine Bracco as the ex-girl friend that Keaton improbably encounters in the Bronx.However, it just didn't work. It's as if someone in Hollywood, flourishing his MBA diploma, said to someone else, also an MBA, "You remember that scene from 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' where Jack Nicholson takes these goofballs on an unethical fishing trip? Wowed the critics and the audiences, didn't it? And made more money than the GNP of half a dozen third-world countries combined? Let's take that episode, dump Nicholson, and make a whole major motion picture out of it." The second reason it didn't work for me is that, if there was little originality in the story, there seemed to be practically none in the gags and comic situations written into it. Peter Boyle wandering the streets of New York enters a church full of bouncing, singing African-Americans, gets the spirit, leaps to the stage and begins a confession of all his sins (none of them particularly noteworthy) while stripping off his clothes item by item. When the writers have one of the male stars begin stripping in a public place, it's always a sign of desperation -- "Scarecrow," "Slap Shot," "Sea of Love." It's not a sign of psychosis but of flagging inspiration.Finally, and this is less important, the four patients in the dream team don't really jibe with reality. The majority of psychiatric inpatients are schizophrenic and they're not at all funny. They don't make wisecracks, they're not expressive, and they're so conversationally clumsy that they don't make friends easily. They're emotions are flat. They're unengaging and just about socially bankrupt. Here, they just have viewer-friendly quirks.None of that stuff matters much. You can turn mental illness (or just about anything else) into a joke if the joke is successful, but this attempt fails.

In ways, this seems a similar concept to that of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (besides the fact that the main character is genuinely crazy and committed). Basically, Dr. Weitzman (Dennis Boutsikaris) works with with patients in a sanitarium, and one day he convinces the administration to take one group of patients to a ballgame. But he stumbles into a crime in progress, and ends up in hospital. The group meanwhile, wander off individually into New York, forced to cope with an often more bizarre place than the sanitarium. The patients include sensible, but also easily stressed leader Billy Caufield (Michael Keaton), Henry Sikorsky (Cuckoo's Nest's Christopher Lloyd) wanting to be the authority and paying more attention to other peoples' behaviour than his own, Jack McDermott (Peter Boyle) who believes he is Christ, and Albert Ianuzzi (Stephen Furst) who never talks for himself and mainly imitates others speeches. Also starring Lorraine Bracco as Riley, Lizbeth MacKay as Henry's Wife and Olivia Horton as Henry's Daughter. In the end, the patients are the heroes when, after being arrested, they get their own way and get the real criminals, and get to see their ballgame. Very good!

Saw this and realized it was a homage to 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'. Really enjoyed it though, and the guys were brilliant. Keaton is his usual brilliant self as is Christopher Lloyd, who I might add, is really hilarious in this. Peter Boyle puts in a fine performance too. The whole story was a relatively simple one and not confusing. Comedy rarely gets this good, from a silly point of view. Dialog is real good, and listen to the constant jokes, which are genuinely funny! Anyone slating this would do well to remember, it is a comedy! Meant to be a farce! With lines like "We are all naked in the eyes of the Lord!" and "Everything is so disorganized", comedy fans'll love this!