The Couch Trip

Some solid ideas are in place.

John W. Burns, Jr. (Dan Aykroyd) is causing trouble for his lacklustre psychiatrist, Lawrence Baird (David Clennon). But just as he is about to be transferred back to prison, he intercepts a phone call offering Baird a position as a psychological radio host in Los Angeles, sitting in for one George Maitlin (Charles Grodin), which he promptly accepts. All he needs to do is escape from the ward, fly to LA, convince a shrewd lawyer that he is a trained professional, and dispense beneficial practical wisdom live with the electric confidence of a warm and friendly person of the people. But before he can get his act in place, another individual with a somewhat skewed relationship with 1980s socio-cultural sublimations catches instinctual wind of his former identity (Walter Matthau as Donald Becker), and decides that it's time to cash in on his disenfranchised observations as well.

The Couch Trip's form is well thought out. If I was in charge of deciding which pitches receive the opportunity to be fleshed out whimsically I definitely would have given that for the The Couch Trip the green light. But unfortunately, while gathering critical creative support, unable to sustain the potential of its expectations, it ironically suffers a nervous breakdown, from which it rarely recovers.

When you have an over-the-top idea which requires a sharp degree of energetic immediacy, one impossible situation to overcome after another, the ways in which that energetic immediacy is galvanized must be sensationally plausible while seeming run of the mill. And The Couch Trip's script, boldly defended by Dan Aykroyd, lacks the wherewithal needed to project even a paltry degree of plausibility, and therefore only transmits a mediocre current.

Walter Matthau does save the day from time to time, and the script is deep, establishing multiple subplots and providing several characters with room to flow. But the material with which said characters are provided falls consistently flat, and although the idea of John W. Burns, Jr. works for me on every level, the predicates and commentaries used to build up his rhetorical flexibility do not, at least in terms of making a film entertaining.