Doc Hollywood

In 1991, Canadian-American Michael J. Fox starred in Doc Hollywood, a Michael Caton-Jones directed romantic comedy. The film came near the apex of Fox’s career, as he was riding the wave of both movie and television success. In Doc Hollywood, Fox plays Benjamin Stone, an up-and-coming young doctor who is on his way to Los Angeles to become a plastic surgeon. His dreams of worldly success and a lucrative income match his hip persona and flashy car. When he accidentally crashes that flashy car into a fence in the little southern town of Grady, he discovers a world incredibly different than either the one he’s leaving behind or dreaming toward. Stone gets stuck in Grady because the townspeople, upset over their fence, think he should work off the damages by providing community service in their clinic. What at first feels like a tiresome, annoying stopover heats up into something interesting when Stone meets Lou, a local single mother played by Julie Warner. Her aggressive suitor Hank, played by popular television actor Woody Harrelson, is none too happy over Stone’s attentions to his girl, but Lou and Doc Stone, as the locals like to call him, find themselves drawn to one another despite all obstacles. David Ogden Stiers, another popular television actor, stars as the town mayor. Although romance takes a front seat, the film also enjoys plenty of moments of comedy, most of them involving the sophisticated Doc Stone as he discovers all the things he doesn’t know how to do in a rural environment. Barnard Hughes plays the town’s regular doctor who enjoys teaching the young, arrogant doctor a thing or two about ordinary medical practice, though Stone is reluctant to learn those lessons at first. Filmed on location in Florida, the movie was a commercial success and a good vehicle for Fox’s charming, sunny persona.