Careful viewers will see hints all along that this sunny, bustling comedy is headed for dark, stormy weather. Meanwhile, the setting among Dallas' giddy nouveau-riche set, with their passion for fur, feathers and anything Big D, from hair to vocalizing, provides comic detail destined to delight.
Reality comes late and, thoughtfully, recasts the bright colors of all that preceded.
Casting, first, and cutting, finally, have defined Altman's particular genius through a long career. This new movie shows him in fine, kaleidoscopic fettle. Smoothie Richard Gere, perfectly cast, stars as a Dallas gynecologist to the city's rich, spoiled and showy. That's just Gere's home life. At the office, he has to deal with not only a gaggle of female assistants, led by Shelley Long's lovelorn chief of staff, but also the endless procession of bejeweled but emotionally bereft patients who bring their gender's problems, pregnancy to menopause, to his office.