Beyond Therapy (1987) is, without a doubt, one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I’ve said it, and I stand by it. If you want to know why, feel free to continue reading.
After I finished watching Beyond Therapy, I honestly struggled to come up with a single thing I liked about it, outside of Jeff Goldberg’s entire wardrobe, which was straight out of 1980s Chess King and International Male… the very type of clothes I loved and proudly sported in that same era!
Let me try to outline the extremely convoluted plot. Try to keep up. Prudence (a wildly miscast Julie Hagerty) meets Bruce (Jeff Goldblum) for a blind date arranged through a magazine ad. Bruce immediately announces he’s bisexual. The date goes terribly, so Bruce runs off to see his therapist, Charlotte (Glenda Jackson), while Prudence heads to her own therapist, Stuart (Tom Conti)—who, by the way, she once had an affair with but still sees professionally. Eventually, Prudence and Bruce meet up for a second date, which actually goes better, until Bob (Christopher Guest) shows up. He’s Bruce’s boyfriend, who he’s been living with for a year. And then Bob’s mom, Zizi (Genevieve Page), starts butting in, trying to get Prudence out of the picture.
It’s a chaotic mess. Now throw in a restaurant patron who keeps flashing people, a group of French-speaking women, other patients that the therapists are seeing, a gay waiter with masculinity issues, and some random "Afternoon Delight" sessions between therapists Charlotte and Stuart, and now you’ve got Beyond Therapy.
It’s a movie that has no idea what it’s about, has terrible pacing, and fails to make any of its characters remotely likable. And while it’s clearly supposed to be a comedy (what kind of comedy is debatable), it took me 75 minutes to actually laugh at something.
Luckily, I managed to find a local theater production of Beyond Therapy (The Greenbelt Arts Center in Greenbelt, Maryland) on YouTube. I figured I owed it to myself to see the source material the way it was meant to be. Surprisingly, it was actually a very good play! So, why was the movie so awful?
There’s really only one answer: Robert Altman.
Altman’s style is totally at odds with the play. The original script is a farce. It satirizes therapy and dating in the early 1980s, with a sharp focus on just Bruce and Prudence. It’s witty, focused, and sure, a little dated. But Altman tried to force in his usual style, tons of characters, overlapping dialogue, and little subplots that go nowhere, and it just does not work here. (The actual play only has four main characters and one small bit role near the end.) By pulling focus away from Bruce and Prudence, he completely lost the point of the whole story.
This has been the first disappointment in my 2025 journey to see all of Robert Altman's films. I struggle to find one reason why I could recommend that anyone watch Beyond Therapy. Did I mention Goldberg's wardrobe?
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