Called a brilliant script, with an acute awareness of marriage and fidelity, “The Secret Lives of Dentists” is not the mind-bending, sharp observation on holy union that some lonely observers would like you to believe it is.
Starring Campbell Scott, the quick-witted playboy from “Roger Dodger” and Hope Davis, Jack Nicholson’s frumpy and misguided daughter in “About Schmidt,” “The Secret Lives of Dentists” revolves around a married couple that runs a dental practice.
Scott plays David Hurst, a family man, with three daughters of neatly spaced age proportions. He tells his wife he loves her before he goes to bed, and he treats his job with the utmost professionalism despite being hounded by a ruthless and acerbic patient, Slater, played by Denis Leary, who only likes to get his teeth fixed when they hurt.
When Davis, who plays Hurst’s wife Dana, is seen being kissed on the cheek by a mysterious man at a musical production, David is convinced that his wife is having an affair with the mystery man. A series of extended absences and other obvious signs that she has lost interest only confirm David’s fears that his wife has left her family behind in search of new, ephemeral lust.
The film confronts David’s inability to say what he should when he should. Leary’s character eventually ends up portraying the negative aspect of David’s conscience, but this is nothing more than a flaw or weakness in screenwriter Craig Lucas’ flimsy work. If the common dentist confronted a patient like Leary in real life, he or she would tell him to take his rotted teeth and bleeding gums to the next white coat down the street. Only a martyr would put up with such abuse.
David’s inability to confront his wife may be indicative of a man who doesn’t want to disrupt his family’s false framework, but borders on the pathetic.
The problem is that this is a watered-down script and propaganda machine formed for the delight of lonely 20- and 30-something singles who want themselves to believe that marriage is prison and that they’d be better off getting drunk at seedy bars on Thursday nights until their livers bottom out. If you want similar examples, see the uber-popular “Sex and the City,” where characters like the 45-year-old Samantha consume more alcohol than David Crosby while whining about the horrors of having a relationship.
The only thing more pathetic than a bad marriage is the assumption of singles and those who believe this film portrays a “crumbling institution” that their lives are somehow superior to those of their committed peers.
Neither the script nor the finished print of “The Secret Lives of Dentists” offers any new or biting commentary on committed relationships in America. Instead, the film reduces its characters to passengers on a plane being flown on autopilot, where no one can do anything except wait until they crash. This is, of course, another assertion by Lucas that’s about as strong as balsa wood. People change, people work things out, people communicate — but not in his world.
“The Secret Lives of Dentists” would like you believe that if you get married, you’ve bought yourself a one-way ticket to the big crash, but an equally interesting film would center on the real side of being alone. Not the glamorized “Sex and the City” version, where everyone drinks vodka like water and buys $2,600 of shoes a day; but the version where people secretly pine for someone to share their life with. Now that’s a movie that I’d pay to see.
Grade: C
