Gross Anatomy

Following director Thom Eberhardt's low-key but riotous Sherlock Holmes parody Without a Clue, this limp med school drama is a real disappointment. Matthew Modine (one of the best young actors around) is sadly wasted as Joe Slovak, son of a working-class family, who rises above his origins to enter a prestigious medical school and there work out his adolescence rebellion problems. Balking at the high pressure environment, resisting the efforts of his "group" in Gross Anatomy class to turn him into a serious student, and chasing after fellow student Laurie Rohrbach (Daphne Zuniga), Joe slums his way through most of the first semester without ever hardly cracking a book, before a contrived melodrama concerning his professor's (Christine Lahti) hidden fatal disease galvanizes him into action (action, in this film, meaning group study). The writers clearly wanted to make The Paper Chase with medicine replacing law, but this paltry substitute is only slightly more animated than the cadavers which festoon the student's tables. Not recommended. (R. Pitman) [Blu-ray/DVD Review—June 12, 2018—Kino Lorber, 109 min., PG-13, DVD: $19.95, Blu-ray: $29.95—Making its latest appearance on DVD and Blu-ray, 1989’s Gross Anatomy features a nice transfer with DTS-HD 2.0 audio. Extras include audio commentary by director Thom Eberhardt. Bottom line: an improvement over the last Blu-ray release, but the film still disappoints.]