Google seems to know us too well.  Some are bothered by this fact.  I am not among that number.  Thus, when I saw a story underneath the search bar on its home screen about one of my favorite places in the whole wide world, Micanopy, I clicked on it, intrigued.  I almost hesitate to tell you about this little town in Florida.  One of the ways it is described in today’s film, Doc Hollywood (1991), is as Shangri-La.  If you are unfamiliar with this mythical area, it is a hidden paradise.  There is a certain parallel with the movie because the town of Grady, South Carolina, that is its setting, like Shangri-La, does not exist.  It was shot, though, in the very real Micanopy, which is no less out-of-the-way and remarkably hard to find for being so close to I-75.  This, too, can be compared to Shangri-La, the remote bit.  If it was an actual location, it would be somewhere in the Himalayas.  This is about as far as you can get from Florida.  Anyway, Micanopy is a little Shangri-La for me, which is why I am not keen on letting the world know about it.  Still, I will press on with the review all the same.

The title character in Doc Hollywood is Dr. Benjamin “Ben” Stone (Michael J. Fox).  He is not in Los Angeles, but rather in a busy Washington D.C. hospital.  There he is a surgeon in their trauma center, and a good one.  Despite being good at his job, he looks forward to a job opportunity in California as a plastic surgeon where the medicine he will practice will be less hectic but more lucrative.  His colleagues do not seem too sad to see him go.  Thus, with little fan fair, he is on the road in his vintage Porsche Speedster driving cross-country to take up his new employment.  When construction tries his patience and takes him down a South Carolina back road, he has to swerve at one point to avoid hitting two women walking cows up the same path.  His evasive maneuvers take his into the yard of Judge Evans (Roberts Blossom) and through a newly built and painted fence.  As a fine for the destruction wrought by Dr. Stone, he is sentenced to thirty-two hours of community service as the tiny town of Grady’s resident doctor.  This is not exactly to Dr. Stone’s liking, but it matters not as his car needs to be repaired in a place where parts for his make and model are not readily available.  Shortly after getting to the town’s doctor’s office, he is picked up by the mayor, Nick Nicholson (David Ogden Stiers), and taken to a home where he will stay for the next few days.  There to greet him are a couple of old ladies who, in true Southern stereotype fashion (get ready for a few of these if you watch this), are knitting a friendship blanket.  They tell him that the first person to sleep under it will dream about the person with which they will fall in love, though he had too much moonshine to recall what they said.  All the same, he has a vision of a topless woman, only to awaken the next morning, go out back to the lake behind the house, and see the same person.  This is Vialula (Julie Warner), better known as Lou. As it turns out, she drives the local ambulance, though he is unable to say much upon their first meeting as she is nude.  At any rate, he goes in for his first day and is treated to a variety of ailments that you would expect from more Southern stereotypes, including a family that is there simply to have him read their letters because they cannot do so.  Meanwhile, he tries to get to know Lou better, but she does not want anything to do with him.  Also, Mayor Nicholson is trying to do everything he can to convince Dr. Stone to stay.  This becomes more of a pressing matter because their resident sawbones (sorry, I could not resist the antiquated doctor term), Dr. Aurelius Hogue (Barnard Hughes), is getting to be too old.  Mayor Nicholson also sees the eyes Dr. Stone makes at Lou, and uses that as further incentive for staying put.  Though she makes easy his decision to leave as soon as possible at first, particularly since it appears that all he wants from her is of the carnal variety, she begins to soften a bit when he makes more gentlemanly advances.  Mainly, this happens when Mayor Nicholson invites him for dinner one night, and he is in need of a date.  He asks Lou, but it also keeps at bay Nancy Lee Nicholson (Bridget Fonda), the mayor’s daughter, and Hank Gordon (Woody Harrelson), an insurance salesman, who have the hots for Dr. Stone and Lou respectively.  The true breakthrough comes during the much ballyhooed Squash Festival.  Amidst the carnival rides and electric lights, Dr. Stone and Lou find each other on the dance floor and share a moment.  It leads to being alone on a boat with fireworks going off overhead, though Dr. Stone finds he cannot go through with the deed.  The next day, following having his fixed car totaled once more while he delivers a baby, he gets a ride to the airport, helped along by Lou saying she is going to marry Hank.  Dr. Stone settles into his life is a Los Angeles plastic surgeon, but finds that he is pining for Grady.  Those feelings spur him to a bar when he receives a message from a Southern woman wanting to meet him.  It turns out to be Nancy Lee, but she is there with Hank.  This means that he is free to return to Grady, which he does, greeting Lou outside of the clinic.  They share a kiss and walk off down the road.

The road Dr. Stone and Lou walk down at the end of Doc Hollywood is one along which I have strolled more than a few times.  I love going to Micanopy because, like the mythical Shangri-La, it is somewhat of a religious experience.  God works in all things, and the more you can realize this, the more authentic will your life be.  This is easy enough to encounter in a place like Micanopy.  When Dr. Stone arrives, he is still a part of a world in which reality is being eroded.  God can work in all things, but we distract ourselves from Him, or outright obfuscate Him, with devices and machines, or the strange world of popular culture against which The Legionnaire so ardently fights.  One of the ugliest ways this happens is through sex.  Modern society is constantly bombarding people that sex in all its forms is the apotheosis of existence, and that it should be obtained as soon as possible.  I am not simply referring to the carnal act, but to the actualization of gender to people too young to understand these things.  This is why there is so much wisdom in the vocation of marriage with all its preparations, including saving the pleasures of the bedroom for after the ceremony.  This is why I was gratified to see that Dr. Stone stopped himself, even if he probably does not think about it in the terms just described.  However he considers it, it is clear that he has learned that there is more to life than the plasticity (note his intended profession) of a one night stand with Lou.

Lou is the one aspect of Doc Hollywood that gives me pause in giving it a full recommendation.  It is nothing against her character.  It is just the complete unnecessariness of how we first meet her.  It is degrading and serves no purpose to the film.  If you can skip over this part, you actually have a solid piece of cinema.  And any opportunity to take a look at Micanopy is a good thing, just do not go telling all your friends about it.