Bad Therapy is a comedy film from director William Tyler and Gravitas Ventures. Based on the novel ‘Judy Small’ by Doyne, the film stars Michaela Watkins, Alicia Silverstone, Rob Corddry and Aisha Tyler, and David Paymer.
Bad Therapy: Overview and Cast
Judy Small, a marriage counselor, is hired by a couple but the counselor is more than what meets the eye. While the movie didn’t look all that interesting in hindsight, it stars Alicia Silverstone, an actress who we haven’t seen in years. But interestingly enough, she made two movies this year so far, Bad Therapy and the other one being The Lodge.
On the brighter side, the movie has a fantastic cast. Alicia Silverstone is great. She’s all-in, giving it her best which is appreciable and it’s just nice to see her again. Speaking of other cast members, Rob Corddry did a fine job in this movie even though he had a little bit more reserved character to play contrary to a lot of his roles in movies like Hot Tub Time Machine or Children’s Hospital.
Genre trouble
Straight up, this film wasn’t great. It felt like the movie did not know what it was trying to be. It’s listed as a “comedy” and if that’s what they were going for, it’s a bad comedy! It won’t make you laugh once, but you might smile a couple of times.
However, one of the biggest issues with this movie was that it’s hard to connect with it, mainly because aside from the daughter character, there isn’t a single likable person in this film and therefore no one to really latch on to. The movie was really trying to show the complexities of the human condition but they aired too much on the nasty side. Almost all of the characters are way more ugly than they are kind.
The first half of this movie is ostensibly a comedy, and as I said, not a very good one. But then right about the mid part of the movie, there’s a genre shift- all the attempts at being a comedy come to an abrupt stop and it takes a hard left turn into a psycho-thriller. And actually, this is where it became marginally more interesting.
Bad Therapy: Conclusion
Overall, it feels like this movie could have been considerably better if the whole thing was just straight-up a psycho-thriller because honestly, the jokes were not serving this movie.
