Movie Review: COMA

   I remember having read the book when I was 15 or so, but couldn't remember most of the details. Not because it wasn't a good book, but because outside of all the embarrassing stuff you did, you don't remember too much from your teens if it didn't involve whoever you had a crush on.
   I also keep forgetting that Michael Crichton was a physician as well as a writer and director, which makes this story quite believable. You like to think that the relationship with your doctors is one of reliability and trust, but "Coma" will make you wonder....
   The tension and mistrust is set up from the very beginning, using the difficulties of being a woman in a male-dominated field to kick off a sense of paranoia. The opening scene has me a little confused though....     
   The lead characters, lovers played by Genevieve Bujold and Michael Douglas are both surgeons, and come home together after a long rotation only to argue about who should cook dinner and who gets to shower first, with Douglas wanting to be served a beer, whining about how difficult his day was and Bujold arguing exactly the same thing. Seems like a point is being made about women working just as hard as men, and shouldn't we all be served a beer?
    But this conversation is immediately followed with lingering, gratuitous Bujold-in-the-shower nudity, sort of cancelling out the support for feminism token with obviously intentional boobsploitation. Given that this film was made in the 70's, I suppose it implies that back then men thought, if she's going to burn her bra, then what's underneath it must be fair game! Still so much to learn...........
   The question as to whether the lead character is delusional and paranoid or justifiably afraid is well played, and carried far enough into the story to keep you guessing. We were kept on the edge of our seats until the very end.
   Besides the above-mentioned issue, the only other complaints that I have are with props and editing. Bujold ditches her shoes and panty hose in one scene, climbing up a utility ladder. Next scene, she is wearing the same shoes, but her panty hose are found on the ladder by someone else much later in the movie. What... was she waiting for them to drip-dry? And Michael Douglas (surgeon, remember) drives around in what looks like a Datsun 4-door sedan. I can accept the very small apartment he supposedly lives in, for a single guy in Boston, but a Datsun?
   My rating: !#*
! (quite suspenseful), # (you see enough of our star and a few comatose female body parts), * I would recommend this film unless you are already afraid of hospitals.
   Keep the remote handy!