Bad Therapy (2020)
97 min.
Release Date: April 17, 2020 (On Demand)
“Bad Therapy” is a reminder that dark comedy can be extremely hard to pull off, if that’s even what the film is trying to achieve. Longtime producer William Teitler makes this adaptation of Nancy Doyne’s book “Judy Small” his feature directorial debut, and while the parts are all there in theory, director Teitler and writer Doyne fail to bring shape or focus to any of them, neither going far enough nor deciding on what chord to strike. There’s no denying that appealing pros Michaela Watkins, Alicia Silverstone, and Rob Corddry are all married to the material, but the script must have read better on the page based on the tonally messy misfire that’s found its way to the screen. “Bad Therapy” just feels like a waste of their abilities.
Susan (Alicia Silverstone) and Bob Howard (Rob Corddry) are a married couple of Angelenos raising Susan’s 13-year-old daughter Louise (Anna Pniowsky) from her previous marriage, which ended in her first husband dying in a freak accident. Susan is a real-estate agent, still in love with Bob but yearning to feel more financially secure and be taken care of, while Bob, a nature channel producer, has no such worries. When Susan takes advice from best gal pal Roxy (Aisha Tyler) to try out therapy, they land on marriage counselor Judy Small (Michaela Watkins). One of Judy’s unorthodox methods is seeing Susan and Bob separately, and as it turns out, she is more than a little unhinged, manipulating the couple and turning them against each other.
Thin, flat and unformed, “Bad Therapy” had so much potential to satirize marriage shrinks in Southern California, and yet it doesn't commit to anything. Does it want to be a perceptive relationship drama with a touch of farcical wackiness? Or maybe a slightly broad send-up of a ‘90s Lifetime-adjacent potboiler about a Therapist From Hell? Whatever it is, the film fumbles on every level, instead occupying an ineffectual, uncomfortable middle ground. (Even the generically sinister, often spoofy music score is emblematic of the entire film, undermining rather than punctuating the severity of the situation.) The film doesn’t even seem particularly interested in making Judy Small more than an idea, a collection of impulses and untreated psychosis, or making any attempt to dig into what makes her tick. Bereft of really any characterization (but no shortage of scarves), she’s an undercooked wacko who lusts after the “exceedingly attractive” Bob, resists help from her former employer (David Paymer), and takes a marker to the face of Louise's best friend (a moment that's never addressed again). Michaela Watkins (2020’s
“The Way Back”) surely invests some devious fun into the potentially fascinating role, but the script lets her down.
Alicia Silverstone (2020’s
“The Lodge”) has a fine handle on Susan and plays neurotic well, while Rob Corddry (2017’s
“The Layover”) is required to unconvincingly play Bob as a patsy, becoming harder to root for as the film shoves along. Day players Aisha Tyler, Haley Joel Osment, and John Ross Bowie try to find amusement here and there, but it’s actually Anna Pniowsky (Hulu’s “PEN15”), who manages to make something out of nothing as Louise. When the film occasionally dumps the central story and hangs with Louise's rebellion, a better film shines through. Finally, the concluding moments of “Bad Therapy" are so abrupt, incomplete, unrealistically pat and upbeat to the point that it feels like a “dream sequence” cop-out; that director William Teitler includes one of the tidiest “where-are-they-now?” codas frustrates even more, reversing a supporting character’s death. Through no fault of the actors who have done and will continue to work on better projects, it's "Bad Therapy” that needed some counseling of its own.
Grade: D +
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