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Young Doctors in Love

Year: 1982
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Director: Garry Marshall
Producer: Jerry Bruckheimer
Writer: Michael Elias/Rich Eustis
Cast: Michael McKean, Sean Young, Harry Dean Stanton, Dabney Coleman, Saul Rubinek, Hector Elizondo, Michael Richards, Demi Moore, Christie Brinkley, Mr T, Richard Dean Anderson, Pamela Reed, Ed Begley Jr

For a kid who watched Flying High over and over again and for whom it's the best comedy ever made to this day, Young Doctors in Love was a hilarious close second.

The review of this film could be virtually the same as for Flying High – it's like trying to explain a joke to someone. On paper it just can't be portrayed how funny the film is by talking about the characters, the setting or even repeating some of the jokes. It's the story of a group of medical interns at a big city hospital and the year they have to realise their ambitions, lives and loves to be the greatest ever.

So far, so melodrama. But Garry Marshall – who I like to think was as inspired by the Zucker brothers as I was and long before he found his modern groove with the likes of Pretty Woman and its rom-com progeny – used midday hospital soaps as the backdrop for an endless string of sight and scripting gags that can still break me up to this day.

Michael McKean is the idealistic but unexpectedly squeamish surgeon, Sean Young the co-worker he falls in love with. And surrounding them are performers who only have to stand there and say the lines to be funny, from Dabney Coleman (the gruff, slightly psychotic administrator) and Harry Dean Stanton (the alcoholic pathologist with delusions of past grandeur) to Michael (Seinfeld) Richards as the unluckiest hitman who ever lived and Hector Elizondo as the gangster who disguises himself as a woman to stay incognito, only for the amorous Dr Rist to fall in love with him.

It contains a lot of faces that are familiar even today, and it's perfect fodder to pass an hour and a half and remind yourself how good it is to laugh at classic spoof comedy.

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