Over-rated film...a depressing, degrading glimpse into mental institution life

Rating: 3/10 (3 April 2006)

When I saw the high rating this movie is getting from viewers, I could hardly believe it and simply had to put in my two cents worth of rebuttal. I haven't seen this film since shortly after its release, nor do I wish to view it again. I agree with one comment that it's the most over-rated movie to come out of the 70's. I also concur with another reviewer that Jack Nicholson's character, McMurphy, is basically self centered and not really compassionate at all toward his fellow inmates. This guy is no hero, and let's not make a tragic victim out of him as an 'anti-hero'.
The movie chronicles the ill adventures of one McMurphy (Nicholson), who fakes insanity so as to do his time for statutory rape in a mental institution, as opposed to a prison. While there, he tries to liven up the place and drum up some independence for his fellow inmates. In the process, he incurs the ill favor of the coldly calculating and hateful Nurse Ratchet, and is eventually forced to have treatments he would certainly never have envisioned for himself.
I really don't have much good to say about any of it. Nicholson isn't my favorite actor at best, though I do realize he won an Oscar for this cleverly captured but rather uninspiring role. As to his character's fate, I found it difficult to sympathize with him. This McMurphy is, frankly, a jerk of the highest order. Louise Fletcher, voted Best Actress, is certainly compelling as the psychiatric patient's 'worst nightmare' nurse. I'll wager a lot of real life nurses in the mental institutions of that era, generally decent people doing a difficult job with reasonable integrity, weren't all that thrilled with the public's new picture of their profession, as personified by the controlling and monstrous Nurse Ratchet. I am personally not a psychiatric nurse, but it doesn't require much brilliance to imagine their sentiments.
I suppose the film did bring to light some of the primitive and cruel treatments employed in psychiatric hospitals, such as shock treatments and lobotomies, but undoubtedly some patients were well cared for even in those days. According to this film, one would think that they were all treated with disrespect and malice. Looking back, it's easy for us to judge now, but the medical professionals then did not have the wide range of medications and so on that are available today and often coped as best they could.
A depressing, degrading, and vastly over rated film. If you haven't already seen it, you're just as well not to bother. It doesn't make for an entertaining or uplifting couple of hours. The intent of this movie should have been to bring dignity and respect to the mentally ill, but its very title conveys the exact opposite message. I agree with with the reviewer who commented that we are expected to feel compassion for these patients (and should) but this film actually makes fun of them.