MOVIE REVIEWS FROM NR John Simon Some Rosy, Some Rugged Impossible as it is to keep up with the plethora of movies unleashed at year's end, let me at least cover three here. Perhaps the most successful, and most noxious, is Patch Adams, based, we are proudly told, "upon a true story," the life of a Virginia doctor whose radical treatment of often terminal patients, though unable to cure them, lets them die laughing. But what does a true story mean in Hollywood? There is indeed a Dr. Hunter "Patch" Adams in Virginia, who runs the Gesundheit Institute, "dedicated," we are informed, "to a more connected, personalized approach to medicine." I can believe that Steve Oedekerk's screenplay and Tom Shadyac's direction follow the broad outline of the case, but their embroidering, especially as embodied by the now totally over-the-top Robin Williams, at best holds up a fun-house mirror to the truth. The movie is a wall-to-wall red-carpet treatment of Williams, continuing what the no less offensive What Dreams May Come began: The already beatified Williams is now sanctified by Patch Adams. The medical student he plays is irresistible to all but a Draconian head doctor at the hospital where Patch is finishing his studies, and where students, doctors, nurses, and patients are equally convulsed by his jokes. Everyone overflows with beaming adulation you can cut not just with a scalpel, but even with the trowel with which it is all laid on. The jokes are mostly on the order of the enema bulb Patch dons as a clown's nose, the bedpan he wears as a hat, and the oversize shoes he must, I suppose, pay for himself. His jokes are occasionally amusing, more often desperate. Of course, the beautiful, unapproachable ice queen of a fellow medical student (nicely played by Monica Potter) falls for the homely, overage, never-seen-studying-but-always-top-grade-earning fellow, even if tragedy thwarts a lasting fulfillment. Finally, in the unlikeliest of trial scenes -- merely a medical board's assessment of Patch's activities, but presented as a presidential impeachment trial in the Senate -- Patch is exonerated before cheering multitudes. You can practically see the halo around that noble brow, even as your nostrils fill up with the odor of sanctity-or something rather worse. If I were dying, I'm not sure I would choose a circus clown to ease my passage, particularly one with the smugness of Robin Williams. About the actual Gesundheit Institute, I am not so sure; it might well be my destination if I were suffering from a case of that unstoppable sneezing I have read about. A Simple Plan begins in a small struggling midwestern town on the afternoon before New Year's Eve, which makes this snow-covered thriller as blanc as a film noir can get. Three men chasing a fox in nearby woods stumble on the snowed-over wreckage of a small plane, containing a duffel bag with $4.4 million in cash. Hank, the smartest, has a humble job in a feed store and a librarian wife, Sarah, who is expecting. Lou, a sort of good ole boy midwestern-style, is unemployed, as is his friend Jacob, Hank's brother, not quite right in the head but possessed of a certain moral sense. After much debating, it is decided to let Hank hide the loot until such time as he can decide whether it is safe to divvy it up or better to burn it. Predictably, things go wrong in various ways; eventually, two of the three men, along with some others, will be dead, and no one will profit from the find. It is an old story -- famed all the way from "The Pardoner's Tale" to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre -- but, as Heine said in a different context, it is ever new. Here it is decidedly full of the most bizarre twists and turns, as written by Scott B. Smith from his own novel, and directed by Sam Raimi, known hitherto only for horror films. Horror-film elements duly pop up, notably in the form of threatening and aggressive crows in the trees around the wreck, one of which wounds Hank in the forehead -- a kind of mark of Cain. In Alar Kivilo's apt cinematography, these birds of evil omen, so black against the surrounding whiteness, objectify the dark that lurks in human hearts. And though the snow is steadily falling, it can obliterate the tracks of the evildoers, but not cancel out their pangs of conscience. From the initial shots of a fox raiding a chicken coop, an atmosphere of rapacity is established, to which even seemingly harmless slobs such as Jacob and Lou -- the village idiot and the town drunk -- readily fall prey. There is a good deal of gallows humor amid the cleverly managed violence, yet the laughter tends properly to stick in the craw. Danny Elfman's music, often mere electronic cacophony, is never overdone, and steadily suggestive. The dialogue and characterization are rich in detail, and the constant surprises do not, for the most part, strain credibility. The ultimate strength is in the rendering of change. Thus the apparently sensible and somewhat mousy Sarah, admirably played by Bridget Fonda, first dispenses prudent advice, but turns into a master strategist of crime even while incongruously dandling her baby in her arms. Both Hank, enacted with fine modulations by Bill Paxton, and Jacob, whose oafishness and decency are touchingly conveyed by Billy Bob Thornton, earn our sympathy despite their guilt, and the rest of the cast, notably Brent Briscoe as Lou, hardly lags behind. And, however it was achieved, the performance of the crows is something to crow about. As feelgood movies go, there's none better than You've Got Mail. Remotely based on Ernst Lubitsch and Samson Raphaelson's The Shop Around the Corner, in turn adapted from a Hungarian hit play, Nora Ephron's romantic comedy does yeoman's service to the fun of e-mail with strangers, the joy of living on New York's Upper West Side, and anybody's dreamed-of sugar intake. Yet the screenplay by the Ephron sisters, Nora and Delia, artfully offsets this sweetness with wry megalopolitan humor, so that even jaded viewers need not choke on it. The plot offers a cozy Upper West Side children's bookstore, The Shop Around the Corner, which pert and plucky Kathleen Kelly inherited from her mother, along with its perky, user-friendly staff. What should arrive a few blocks down but a huge branch store of gigantic Fox Books, an empire whose crown prince is smooth Joe Fox. The two shopkeepers become worst enemies, even though, unbeknown to them, they are affectionate computer correspondents, sharing nearly everything except their real names. To complicate matters, each has a live-in lover. His is an enterprising, smart-talking book editor played by the sleek Parker Posey; hers a high-powered newspaper columnist, Frank Navasky, enacted by the dapper Greg Kinnear. But the protagonist is the nook-and-crannied Upper West Side, which John Lindley shoots with slick-magazine chic to spare. Costumes are duly mouthwatering; the background music is 24-carat oldies, rubbing against us as insidiously as a love-hungry pussycat. The stars provide topnotch spectator sport. Tom Hanks, even when Joe is at his most annoying, gushes charm like the fountains of Versailles water. As he grows more serious about the girl who seems to hate him, he makes us root for him as if he were embroiled in a serious contest of uncertain outcome. Even more prodigious is Meg Ryan, whose often caramelized vehicles belie her inherent spunk. (Catch her in a very different role in the unpleasant but expert Hurlyburly.) As Kathleen, she walks the razor's edge of cuteness with the assurance she might deploy shaving her legs. In Riverside Park, when she finally realizes that her two loves are one and the same, her face and body become transparent, and we can follow every incremental stirring of anxiety, dawning awareness, and overwhelming bliss. 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