Philadelphia (1993)

Others have commented on caricatures and on "heroes versus villains" simplicity of the characters. I generally agree. I should point out, however, that the plaintiff is portrayed as having succumbed to casual sex and professes to have been very naive about the etiology of HIV. As some have noted, the plaintiff's attorney is a homophobe and, Demme and the script make it clear, overcomes that tendency but a bit in the course of the film.

The caricatures to which I should draw attention are the lawyers in this lawyer-laden film. Demme and the script have created a festival of lawyer jokes. The advertisements and literal jokes ["What do you call 1000 lawyers chained to the bottom of the sea?" is an example] MAY have been an attempt to analogize between stigmatized social groups [such as gays] and stigmatized occupational groups. If so, I do not believe the effect was achieved. Instead, the film plays to stereotypes and mythology about law and lawyers.

Take the brief interview in which Denzel Washington's character establishes that a injured man is pushing a lawsuit without merit. Added to Washington's TV ads, the ambulance-chaser stereotype is realized -- but to what end? How does it advance anything to play to slander and innuendo about plaintiffs' attorneys? At best the viewer sees that, confronted with a genuine case, Washington turns it down to get Hanks' character out of his office.

Moreover, the laughable testimony by the law partners virtually handed the plaintiff the case. Why would lawyers tell stories about Navy latrines or expound on the Bible when they knew it would hurt their case?

So, when you hear that this film is sappy and politically correct, please realize that such comments are slightly off center. The film is sophomoric rather than sappy. The humanity of the Hanks character is actually realized deftly, in my viewings of the film. The film IS politically correct -- but the political correctness is in slurring lawyers as a class. It is politically correct to castigate lawyers.

Could have been a much better film with a little thought and care.