The Treatment

A Woody Allen-ish comedy, Oren Rudavsky's The Treatment, based on Daniel Menaker's novel, revolves around three central characters: New York prep school teacher Jake Singer (laid-back Chris Eigeman), who's unlucky in love; Allegra Marshall (attractive Famke Janssen), the widowed mother of one of his students; and Dr. Ernesto Morales (wildly flamboyant Ian Holm), the overbearing psychiatrist who warns Jake (but may in fact be no more than a figment of Jake's fevered imagination) against getting involved with Allegra. Essentially a coming-of-age movie about a guy who should have matured 15 years earlier, The Treatment leans a bit too heavily on sheer quirkiness, and it has a few subplots (including one concerning an African-American basketball player) that simply go nowhere, but it captures the ambience of private-school snobbery very well, and Holm, sporting a wacky Argentinean accent, delivers a delightfully over-the-top performance that nicely complements the more subdued turns by his costars. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include deleted scenes, a featurette in which therapists discuss the film, and clips from Rudavsky's earlier works. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a mostly winning comedy.] (F. Swietek)