What About Bob? (1991)

Director: Frank Oz
Starring: Bill Murray, Richard Dreyfuss, Julie Hagerty, Charlie Korsmo & Kathryn Erbe

* * *

It seems I can take Bill Murray being the sarcastic jerk more than I can take his playfully dumb roles. In films like Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day, Murray's sarcasm is either a charming quirk of his character's personality or a trait whose eventual absence signifies the terminus of his character arc. In What About Bob?, the Bob character doesn't have an arc of his own. His character remains the same as the rest of the world develops around him. It's essentially a one punch-line film where Murray does something annoying and Dreyfuss reacts. The chaos of the specific events escalate, but nothing else really changes. This is not Oz's best work, nor is it Murray's.

February 17
apartment TV, early afternoon

* * *

D