Doctor Detroit

Directed by Michael Pressman, Doctor Detroit follows a meek professor (Dan Aykroyd’s Clifford Skridlow) as he reluctantly agrees to adopt the guise of the larger-than-life title figure. It’s an agreeable-enough premise that is, for the most part, employed to slapdash and thoroughly lackluster effect by Pressman, as the filmmaker, working from Bruce Jay Friedman, Carl Gottlieb, and Robert Boris’ screenplay, delivers a meandering, curiously low-rent endeavor that contains few elements designed to capture and sustain the viewer’s interest – with the arms-length atmosphere perpetuated by a recurring absence of laughs and Aykroyd’s annoying, nails-on-a-chalkboard turn as the central character. (The performer’s wildly over-the-top efforts are especially grating during scenes focused on Doctor Detroit himself.) The inclusion of a few admittedly compelling digressions, including (and especially) a musical number involving James Brown, does little to alleviate the predominantly interminable atmosphere, and it is, in the end, impossible to label Doctor Detroit as anything less than a palpable failure that squanders an unquestionably talented cast.

*1/2 out of ****