Lovesick (1983 film)

Film by Marshall Brickman

Lovesick is a 1983 American romantic comedy film written and directed by Marshall Brickman. It stars Dudley Moore and Elizabeth McGovern and features Alec Guinness as the ghost of Sigmund Freud.

Psychoanalyst Saul Benjamin takes on a patient temporarily as a favor to a colleague friend, Otto Jaffe, who is infatuated with her. After her doctor dies, Chloe Allen comes to see Dr. Benjamin and immediately he is smitten with her, too. The doctor patient relationship is violated by Dr. Benjamin's romantic impulses toward Chloe and by his intense jealousy of anyone who comes near her, including Ted Caruso, an arrogant Broadway actor with whom she has become involved. The psychiatrist's wife also is carrying on an affair with Jac Applezweig, an artist. The ghost of Dr. Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology, visits Dr. Benjamin from time to time to dispense warnings and wisdom. Benjamin's work begins to suffer as he abandons patients like Mrs. Mondragon, finding her tedious, and treats the paranoia of another, Marvin Zuckerman, by designing a peculiar handmade hat for him to wear. A board of inquiry calls in Dr. Benjamin to consider revoking his license. In the end, he admits his feelings to Chloe and concludes that he prefers true love to treating the sick.

Lovesick was released in theatres on February 18, 1983.

Film critic Vincent Canby wrote in his review, "Mr. Moore and Miss McGovern are such appealing lovers that the movie successfully bypasses all questions of ethics." Book editors Laurence Goldstein and Ira Konigsberg wrote in their book, The Movies: Texts, Receptions, Exposures, "One looks back with nostalgia to a time when psychotherapists are not fools like [ ] lovesick fools like Dudley Moore [ ] Psychotherapists were certainly portrayed as comic and horrific figures in earlier films, but they were a good deal of respect than in recent years."

Lovesick was one of two early 1980s films originally intended to star Peter Sellers. Production was to have begun in early 1981, once Sellers had finished shooting Romance of the Pink Panther. Sellers's death in July 1980, before Romance of the Pink Panther had even started production, meant that his roles in both Lovesick and 1984's Unfaithfully Yours went to Dudley Moore.