Garry Marshall spent the '70s and early '80s overseeing two of the more wholesome, successful sitcoms in television history, Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. Young Doctors in Love is the work of a director exploding with the need to get away with material unimaginable on the small screen. This raucous comedy takes advantage of its hospital setting by having as many body function jokes thought possible in the pre-Farrelly days. That many of these jokes work (at least many more than one might expect) has much to do with the amazing cast Marshall put together. Michael McKean, Sean Young, Harry Dean Stanton, Hector Elizando, and Pamela Reed all bring a professionalism to this material that helps them sell the comedy without overplaying how silly all of it is. Michael Richards, playing an unlucky hitman, made his film debut here, getting many laughs with broad physical comedy. What makes Young Doctors in Love worth seeing is that even though the material is beneath the filmmakers and actors, they never play down to the audience. The jokes are dumb, but the performances are not. This is one smart dumb comedy.
