It'd be nice to think that a long delayed release meant that a distributor was figuring out just how to market something, but unfortunately, that's not the case with The Heart Specialist. Produced in 2006, the film is just being released now, presumably riding off star Zoe Saldana's dual 2009 hits Star Trek and Avatar and the seemingly daily increasing awareness of Wood Harris's The Wire. While the cast is certainly strong enough to produce the light-hearted sexy romantic comedy that the ads promise, they're held back by a script and direction (both from Dennis Cooper) that can't keep up.
Ray Howard (Brian White) is a cocky, self-assured Harvard Medical school graduate just coming off a nasty break-up with Valerie (Mya), precipitated in part by his refusal to return to her a sex tape featuring the two of them. He comes under the direction of Dr. Sidney Zachary (Wood Harris) a heart and lung specialist with supportive girlfeind Donna (Zoe Saldana), who sets out to remold Howard into a freshly intelligent, sensitive man. This is all mixed in with Zachary’s comedy routine, in which he riffs on various topics all tangentially related to his medically unsound theory that laughter is the best medicine.
You know that things are in a bad state when the least of The Heart Specialist’s problems is that it isn’t funny; and it isn’t. Jokes come in fast and furious, but frequently from such peripheral characters that they feel desperate. It doesn’t help that this is set in a hospital, where major surgeries are performed and horrific injuries are treated. Other hospital comedies have been wise enough to spare us most of these visuals, but The Heart Specialist frequently drops in grotesque visuals that serve only to kill whatever good humor had been generated by Saldana and Harris. Only too late do we realize that this has been prepping us for a tear-jerker of a finale, when the film delves so far into Patch Adams territory that it’s amazing that clown-nosed cancer patients didn’t show up. And that’s before the entire cast starts dancing.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
There are a few additional scenes.
"The Heart Specialist" is on sale October 4, 2011 and is rated R. Comedy, Drama. Written and directed by Dennis Cooper. Starring Brian White, Wood Harris, Zoë Saldana, Mya.
