Great Film overall

An Exercise In Nonsense

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

This is a terrific film dealing with 3rd year medical students in the tradition of television's "Ben Casey" and "Dr. Kildaire."We live through their experiences. We see their love interests, and the latter conflicting with their medical responsibilities to themselves and their patients. We see how a young couple's marriage is adversely affected by medical school, we view competition between 2 excellent promising doctors for a top spot.It's amazing that I would think so positively about a film that plays a song at the disco where the doctors go to relax and dance up a storm. The song goes about everyone falling on the floor, everyone kills a dinosaur!The best part of the film is that it perfectly describes the idea that medicine in itself is not a perfect science. We view the emotions of doctors when tragedy strikes during a routine injection of a young patient.The cast is top rate.Notice that Norma Aleandro plays a 49 year old, 25 year elementary schoolteacher facing stomach cancer. Hard to believe that she has that position with her think Spanish accent.What's even better about this film is that it shows that doctors are human beings, subject to the human frailties as all of us.

Completely ordinary and boring "drama" of a bunch of third year medical students.This story is so by the numbers it's insulting. Every character has they own separate little drama and they're all tied up nice and fine by the end of the movie. Every single story line is predictable (as are the outcomes) so it gets incredibly boring just watching it. I also heard there were a lot of errors in terms of the medical dialogue...but I can't swear to that. They have a bunch of very talented actors who are just wasted. All of them struggle with their roles but they're given totally one dimensional characters to work with. No actor could make this work.I give this a 2 only for the nude and real hot sex sequence between Adrian Pasdar (all pumped up) and Diane Lane (looking great). Still that's no real reason to watch this. Avoid.

This movie is very much like Gross Anatomy, released the previous year, only it is much more dramatic and involves third year med students in action. It looked like it could've been a pilot for a television show, except the ending when everyone disbands to practice their own specialties across the country. Third year medical students are faced with a greuling year of endless days of rounds and heated competition for residencies, internships, and specialties. The center of the story is Michael Chatham (Adrian Pasdar), a surgeon hopeful who learns the reality of hospital life as well as what is necessary to get ahead, competing with a fellow surgeon hopeful Kenny Rose (Jack Gwaltney) and butting heads with a conniving surgeon resident (Bradley Whitford). Rose is heatedly competetive against Chatham to get the internship with Dr. Redding (Jimmy Smits), so much so that it jeopardizes his marriage (his wife played by Laura San Giacomo) and tests the faithfulness of his friendship to Chatham. Somehow, though, everyone wins in the end.Diane Lane plays Chatham's love interest, Gina Wyler, who I suppose is to this film what Daphne Zunigan is to Gross Anatomy, only not so reluctant to enter a relationship with Chatham. Suzanne Maloney (Jane Adams) and Bobby Hayes (Tim Ransom) play the other two students in their third year group, who make an amusing distraction from the main plot as roommates who try the 'couple' thing, but can't make it work. Vital Signs isn't all that bad, though there is some repition between this and Gross Anatomy and moments where you are just aching for something important to happen as they tend to drag on with petty subplots and other trivial situations. They were building up to something good with Smits as the laid-back mentor and should've given more attention to just that. Nonetheless, it is still a rather entertaining movie documenting a day in the life of a couple of determined med students. Best recommended for Adrian Pasdar and Jimmy Smits fans.

Why is it that movies about medical school always have the same formula for their characters (reference this movie, Gross Anatomy, Patch Adams...more)? There always has to be the hot-shot male lead for whom everything comes easy...except the good looking, no-nonsense female student, who feels like she has to work harder than everyone else to make up for the fact that she is a woman (and therefore has no time for men). Then there is the wacky friend, and as always there is the uptight, male student we all hate, who works really hard, but just can't seem to beat the protagonist. Surely there is some other way to develop interesting characters in this setting.Either way, coming from the perspective of a current medical student, I found this movie to be far more interesting, realistic, and believable than any of the other aforementioned movies (yes, I know P.A. was a true story...my statement stands). Granted, you will be infinitely more likely to find third year medical students transporting stool samples and chasing down fast food for their residents than scrubbing in and performing abdominal surgery.I found the student/patient, student/student, student/resident relationships to be very well developed and believable. The script was interesting, upbeat, and gave a good look at the tempo and pressure of third year. There were plenty of plot intricacies to keep you "tuned in" throughout the movie. The cast is short on big names, but I believe well cast, and believable as students(I've read that they shadowed medical students before filming).I wouldn't say that this movie is a must-see, but it is the most accurate depiction of medical school that I have seen, and there probably isn't a physician out there whose stomach won't tense up a bit when the attending physicians begin "pimping" the students on Grand Rounds.