What The Doctor Ordered – A Short Film Review
What The Doctor Ordered is a fantastic light-hearted comedy short that looks at how a couple use food to express their love (order hatred) towards each other with hilarious consequences.
Sandra and Thomas are a married couple trying to deal with some issues. Thomas is struggling to understand Sandra and why she is so upset, he can’t even apologise to her in the right way, even though he does not know what he has done wrong! These meaningless apology’s simply infuriate Sandra who then decides to throw the contents of the fridge in his direction. Thomas takes this act of violence in his stride and he continues to attempt to win over Sandra, until they finally make up, with the help of some whipped cream. A guidance counsellor attempts to talk through there issues and help them to understand each others emotions more and how to overcome these communication problems.
Yvonne LaBarge is in the directors chair and gives us a fantastic vision of this short. Some excellent camera work and great editing make this a fast-moving offbeat comedy a pleasure to watch. The action was caught to perfection as the contents of the fridge were thrown in the direction of Thomas. The whole short was perfectly lit and had a great natural feel to it.
Audrey Noone wrote the film. The writing is very satisfying, fun and humorous which can’t help but make you grin. The simplest of stories that is so relatable to real-life situations, I am sure everyone who watches this can relate to the title characters. The dialogue is natural and very free flowing, with nothing unnecessary and everything having a purpose and driving the story forward. It is pretty clear to me that Audrey has an amazing sense of humor by what she has made here, well-timed and expertly executed.
Not only writing this short, Audrey also plays the title character of Sandra and demonstrates her talents in front of the camera giving us an exceptional performance. Noone plays the character for every ounce it’s worth and her voice carries the real emotions of the character, but what really shines for me is when she is not talking, the body language and the facial expressions are priceless and it is these actions what really take the character to another level altogether, an extremely strong performance.
Sean McPherson plays Thomas, the clueless husband struggling to understand his wife. McPherson manages to match the performance of Noone with another brilliant performance. His timing is impeccable, a particular moment that stayed with me long after the short had finished was when Sandra through a strawberry at Thomas which he caught, looked at it for a second, took a bite and delivered the line “Mmm, these are very good, you should try one!”. This was perfectly timed, I wonder how long he had to stand there covered in food to get it just right? Another was his satisfying smile right at the end of the film when he finally discovered how to get his own way.
It is also worth mentioning the music in this film. The soundtrack was very well suited to the script and really helped to move the story along and keep everything very light-hearted. Zachary Krodel was responsible for the original music and has done an outstanding job creating something that is perfectly fitting to the story.
Overall this is a fine example of why I love short film. Something very entertaining, easy to watch and highly enjoyable, and at only five minutes long there is no excuse not to watch it. A very strong cast all doing a great job to make something special. Noone and LaBarge make an excellent team and it will interesting to see what else they can do together.
Watch the movie yourself here.
