Laughter may or may not be the best medicine, but the repeated sight of Robin Williams wearing a red rubber enema bulb on his nose can get emetic. He's portraying the real-life Hunter "Patch" Adams, a former psychiatric patient turned medical student and crusader for a more humanized way of treating the ill. Set in the early '70s, the film offers montages of a sanctimonious, not terribly funny Adams doing shtick for kids in the cancer ward and having run-ins with Dean Walcott (Bob Gunton), the cardboard villain who believes doctors should be demigods and not clowns and is determined to get Patch dismissed from the university.

Adams wins the hearts of everyone else, however -- in particular that of fellow student Carin (Monica Potter), an uptight careerist who finally succumbs to his slapstick charm and joins him in forming a free clinic. That and her after-hours tryst with him prove her undoing, but this is no more than a footnote in the overbearing onslaught of Robin Williams being funny and good. Watching Patch Adams is like being bedridden and suffering the further indignity of a caregiver who is self-righteous and thinks he's a comedian.