What About Bob? (1991) * *

Directed by:  Frank Oz

Starring:  Bill Murray, Richard Dreyfuss, Kathryn Erbe, Julie Hagerty, Charlie Korsmo

Watching What About Bob? again for the first time in a long while, I enjoyed it more than I did when it was released in 1991.    Bill Murray didn't grate on my nerves this time, but the movie remains a one-joke enterprise in which the guileless, clueless neurotic Bob Wiley (Murray) slowly drives his shrink, the uptight Leo Marvin (Dreyfuss), insane.   

As What About Bob? opens, Bob, whose neuroses are so bad he can't touch anything without holding a Kleenex and is terrified to leave his house, is referred to Leo after driving his former shrink to quit his practice.    Leo tells Bob to contact him after he returns from his month-long vacation, which will not do for Bob, who feels he will lose it if he is not able to see Leo.    Through some underhanded means, Bob finds out where Leo is spending the month with his family and travels there to see him.    This does not sit well with Leo, who not unreasonably feels Bob is intruding on him.    The rub is:  Leo's family takes to Bob and likes him, which makes Leo all the more enraged.  

Leo attempts to get rid of Bob, first subtly, then dropping him off at the nearest mental institution, which doesn't work.    Bob keeps finding a way back into Leo's life, without being able to take the hint that Leo can't stand him.     Good Morning America plays a role in the film, as Leo's new book is featured, but we see he clearly doesn't follow his own advice when it comes to Bob.    We see changes in Bob, who learns to be less neurotic and in control of himself, while Leo devolves into frustrated lunacy.  

So why doesn't What About Bob? not quite work?    There are inspired moments in which Dreyfuss masterfully gives us the slow burn.     He is a funny straight man, a man who just wants to be left alone, while Bob ingratiates himself into Leo's life whether he likes it or not.     The movie is sporadically funny, but not overly satisfying as a whole.    Maybe it is because Leo's trajectory doesn't shift at all.    He doesn't learn to accept Bob or to become a better shrink.    He is just driven mad in an escalating fashion, and this can only go so far before it grows tiresome.    There are times when the film borders on slapstick, such as when Bob performs a Heimlich maneuver on Leo so painful Leo probably would've been happier choking to death.   

Director Frank Oz has made some great comedies, including the masterful Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), Bowfinger (1999), and charmers like Housesitter (1992), In & Out (1997), The Stepford Wives (2004), and even a strong caper film, The Score (2001).    He is adept at making subtle comedies with more emphasis on satire and characters than over-the-top situations.    What About Bob? is a bit out of his element.    I think of the Oscar-winning short film The Appointments of Dennis Jennings (1988) in which comedian Steven Wright plays a neurotic regular patient of a competent shrink (Joe Mantegna) whom he slowly drives mad.    The movie mostly takes place in the shrink's office, but we see how their dynamic slowly and subtly unnerves the normally in-control Mantegna.    I would have liked to have seen the same idea applied here, with Murray and Dreyfuss doing their stuff while leaving everyone else home.