As maniacally goofy as Robin Williams could be, I couldn't help but feel a bit of pathos in the character of Patch Adams, the former mental patient who went on to develop a radical new type of therapy for hospital patients - humor. This all in hindsight of course, as Williams took his own life after a long and distinguished career as perhaps America's premier funny man during his heyday beginning in the late Seventies up until his death in 2014. Following Adams' attempted suicide in the story, a renewed sense of humanitarian spirit emerges that inspires him to attend medical school and become a doctor in order to help people overcome their ailments, both mental and physical. Surely, the film can only scratch the surface of the career of the real Patch Adams on whom the story is based. His Gesundheit Institute operated as a free community hospital from 1971 to 1984, while a revamped Gesundheit! Institute, envisioned as a free, full-scale hospital and health care eco-community, is planned on 316 acres in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. There's something intuitively appealing about the use of humor as a healing art, diametrically opposed to the austere methods of the movie's Dean Walton (Bob Gunton), who wouldn't know how to crack a smile if he encountered a room full of clowns. The genuine Hunter 'Patch' Adams is still alive at seventy six years of age (as I write this), a self described physician, comedian, social activist, clown, and author. To give you an idea how zany the man must be in real life, he named his two sons Atomic Zagnut Adams and Lars Zig Edquist Adams.
Review of Patch Adams
