YMMV / Patch Adams

• Critic-Proof: There appears to be an incredible amount of hate directed towards this movie (featuring only a 23% on Rotten Tomatoes), but it was a financial success. Since Williams' tragic death in 2014, the film is often mentioned among many common moviegoers' favorite roles for him. Granted, it is likely just because of Robin Williams and not the movie itself.
• Designated Hero: Besides acting like a general Jerkass to his schoolmates in an attempt to make them laugh, Patch also commits several ethically questionable actions, like stealing drugs from a hospital and practicing without a license. Patch's own sense of humor can also come across as offensive to those he's supposed to help, such as making jokes at the expense of a catatonic schizophrenic or designing the university door to resemble a giant woman's vagina in preparation for visiting gynecologists. He still gets treated as in the right, even when it ends up killing two people, and the only people who call him out for his actions are treated as humorless villains. Needless to say, the real-life Hunter Adams did no such thing.
• Designated Villain: As pointed out above, the people who have the gall to call out Patch for his actions, or don't think he's as funny as he thinks he is, are treated as asshats who just need to get a sense of humor. Keep in mind that some of the things Patch did are felonies, and that all of his actions led to the deaths of two people, including his girlfriend.
• Don't Shoot the Message: Some of the film's fiercest critics are those who believe in new forms of medical treatment and agree with Patch that patients should be treated as more than sicknesses to be cured and there should be services for those without insurance, but detest the immature way these messages are conveyed.
• Fridge Horror: At one point in the mental hospital, Patch gets a laugh by putting words in the mouth of "Beanie," a catatonic schizophrenic. That scene becomes this when you take into account that, in real life, catatonic schizophrenics are very aware of what's going on around them during their catatonic episodes, even though they're powerless to respond, and are frequently upset by people doing things exactly like that. Now watch that scene again. Ouch. Just what was it like for him? How bad was it to him?
• Funny Moments:
  • Patch declares his exit from the asylum to his doctor, as well as his intentions to study medicine:
    Patch: I want to learn about people, I want to help them with their troubles.
    Doctor: That's what I do.
    Patch: But you suck at it.
  • Patch making the swimming pool of noodles and swimming in it with the old lady.
• Glurge: This movie is supposed to be inspiring and touching but it has a jerkass character committing crimes. Even if you buy into it, it's still layered on too thickly.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Patch sarcastically asks if a doctor will explode if they become emotionally involved with a patient. We find out the answer to this question when Patch's girlfriend is shot by a psychotic patient. What makes this worse is that the killer's mental instability could have been detected had Adams run a background check. Like a doctor is supposed to do.
  • Every single scene where Patch contemplates suicide is incredibly difficult to watch in light of his actor, Robin Williams, taking his own life. It's also a lot more unsettling with his line "what's wrong with death, sir?"
  • It's also much harsher to hear this particular line.
    "Our job is improving the quality of life, not just delaying death."
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Despite the criticism the movie received, the promotional picture of Patch smiling while wearing his clown nose became iconic enough for it to be forever associated with Robin Williams himself due to it being a genuinely touching image. It's become even more iconic since Williams' death.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • You know, the government should pay for health insurance. This was hardly a new idea-most developed countries had universal healthcare by the time the film was made, and President Bill Clinton attempted to pass the same thing in the early 1990s as well.
  • At one point when Patch is entertaining terminally-ill children, he pretends to be a Cloudcuckoolander doctor who is about to perform surgery: "My name is Doctor... [checks badge] ... Phil."
• Narm:
  • This exchange is pretty snarkworthy. Yes, it's meant to show what a humorless jerk the Dean is (even though he is right about Patch's behavior), but instead just sounds like some vain cartoony supervillain.
    Patch: "Why am I such a threat to you?"
    The Dean: "Because what you want for us is to get down on the same level as our patients!"
  • Patch's line "What's wrong with death?" It's supposed to be uplifting and powerful, but that's the last thing you want to hear from a doctor.
• Retroactive Recognition: During Carin's funeral, Greg Sestero i.e. Mark from The Room (2003) appears as an extra. Oh hai, Mark!
• Squick: That stunt Patch pulls to the visiting gynecologists where he places a pair of giant inflatable legs by the college's door so the entrance resembles a giant vagina can come off as just Sick and Wrong.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • The villains argue that doctors should act professionally.
    • Patch's point: professionalism should not supersede humanity. He's criticizing the medical profession's tendency to distance themselves from their patients, to the disservice of the patient's mental well-being. He's not necessarily wrong, it's just that he tends to go too far in the other direction. Also, the film goes to the lengths of making the more professional doctors into strawmen by making them so emotionally distant that they've apparently never heard of bedside manner, such as casually talking about amputating a patient's leg in front of her as if she wasn't even there.
    • Opposing point: It's important to consider the doctor's mental well-being. Getting too attached to patients and then watching helplessly as they die can really put a person out of sorts. It's why they try to be more distant in the first place. In contrast, Patch does things like mocking the concept of women's health and decides that those who aren't laughing just lack a sense of humor. (Or maybe they just, you know, don't like obnoxious people?)
  • Philip Seymour Hoffman actually considered it intentional that his character Mitch Roman be something of a jerk with a good argument in order to address those counter issues. At one point, Mitch accuses Patch of cheating, citing the latter's unprofessional attitude towards everything (including studying) and somehow having the highest grades in class. This was infuriating to him as a person because he was studying his ass off to learn medicine and wanted his patients to respect that, not expecting him to be a kindergarten teacher.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Instead of trying to be a faithful depiction of Hunter Adams' life and career, the film seems focused on repurposing Dead Poets Society, with doctors: both movies center around an "inspiring" rebel played by Robin Williams who shakes things up in an establishment run by a no-fun-allowed authority figure, in both movies Williams' protagonist forms a group of academics that follow his example, in both films a character important to him dies tragically, and the scene with the ill children wearing clown noses can be seen as the equivalent of the "Captain My Captain" scene from Dead Poets Society. The fact that Patch even reads a poem during Carin's funeral is just the icing on the cake.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: In one chapter of Greg Sestero's book, The Disaster Artist, he recalls his experience on set with Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who he described as very solemn as they were keeping in-character for the funeral scene. It astounded him to realize just how professional a comic actor like Williams could be, especially considering it's a scene fabricating the death circumstances of a real person.

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