I knew I had seen Dr. T & the Women when it came out in 2000, but I couldn’t recall a single scene. That should have been my first clue. Still, in pursuit of my 2025 goal to watch every Robert Altman film, I decided to give it another shot. Now that I’ve rewatched it, the mystery of my memory lapse is solved: there’s not much here worth remembering.
Richard Gere stars as Dr. T (short for Travis), an extremely handsome Dallas gynecologist whose patient list reads like a who’s who of uptight Southern socialites. Despite the occasional hunting trip with his bros, Dr. T is firmly embedded in a world of women, including his increasingly unwell wife Kate (Farrah Fawcett), his daughters Dee Dee (Kate Hudson) and Connie (Tara Reid), his alcoholic sister-in-law (Laura Dern) and her gaggle of toddlers, his crush-harboring assistant (Shelley Long), and a parade of privileged, hormonal patients packing his waiting room.
Altman tries to capture the slow unraveling of a man surrounded by feminine energy he can neither understand nor control. It starts with Kate’s mental breakdown, diagnosed by Dr. Harper (Lee Grant) as “Hestia Complex”, a fictional condition so absurd it should come with a laugh track. Apparently, Kate has received so much love that she’s regressed into a childlike state and must be institutionalized. It’s at this point that the movie slides from being an intriguing character study to a clumsy farce.
As Dr. T grapples with his wife’s departure from reality, his daughter prepares for a lavish wedding, and his life further spirals when he falls for Bree (Helen Hunt), the new golf pro at his club. Their affair feels less like passion and more like another obligation for the doctor to mismanage.
The movie's crescendo is set during Dee Dee’s outdoor wedding, which, naturally, takes place in a torrential downpour. Amid the chaos, Dee Dee ditches her groom at the altar and runs off with her bridesmaid, Marilyn (Liv Tyler), confirming a long-hidden college romance. In the span of a few soggy minutes, Dr. T loses his wife, his mistress, and the illusion that he ever had any control to begin with.
Then, as if this wasn’t enough melodrama, the film ends with a surreal left-hand turn when Dr. T drives into a tornado and miraculously emerges in a dusty village, where he delivers a baby in a graphic, unflinching birth scene (the scene is an actual birth, filmed straight on). And much to Dr. T’s delight as he wipes the baby with a wet cloth, the baby… is a boy. It’s clear Altman was going for a symbolic rebirth, but the moment is so forced and contrived that it fails in every way.
To be fair, the cast isn’t the problem. Gere, Dern, Fawcett, Hudson, and Long all have solid moments, and Altman’s signature style of overlapping dialogue and ensemble chaos is present. But unlike Nashville or M*A*S*H, this film lacks insight. Most of the characters are one-dimensional, and the pacing drags. At no point did I actually care what happened to anyone. Watching Dr. T & the Women is like sitting in an overbooked waiting room for two hours, slowly realizing the doctor is never coming.
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