Former SCTV
founding member Dave Thomas (no, not the dead Wendy’s founder) drops
multi-hyphenate skills in this hospital-based laffer, previously known
as Intern Academy. While not without its broad moments — the very obvious rip-off, err… template here is Scrubs — the movie works well enough as a comedy of colorful relationships, and should thus provide amusing counterpoint to fans of Grey’s Anatomy, which has, of course, supplanted ER as the dominant surgical soap of the American small screen.

Written and directed by Thomas, White Coats
is set at St. Albert’s Hospital, where a budget crunch has driven away
most of the top talent and forced philandering administrator Dr. Cyrill
Kipp (Dan Aykroyd) to sell off equipment to keep things going. This
leaves Dr. Omar Olson (Thomas) on the front lines with a group of five
interns to grapple with lost patients, bizarre emergency-room cases and
the like. It’s here that the movie spends most of its time and focus,
charting the personal foibles and back stories of its young charges
(the neurotic, the hottie working her way through med school by
stripping, et al) by bouncing them off one another in randy and/or
otherwise charged fashion, all while also still allowing for some
showcase fun from Thomas’ considerable roster of friends, including
Dave Foley, Matt Frewer, Saul Rubinek and Maury Chaykin.

Housed in a regular Amray case, White Coats is presented in
1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 English-language
track. Additionally, the case lists optional English subtitles, but
both English and Spanish subtitles are available, though, in a glitch, the former switches to
Spanish roughly three-fifths of the way through the feature.
Thankfully, no such malfunctions mar Thomas’ delightful
audio-commentary track, in which he discusses the inspiration for the
movie, the difficulties inherent in mounting a homegrown Canadian
production and the film’s Edmonton, Alberta shoot, chiefly on location
in an abandoned hospital. He also winkingly acknowledges the beseeching
insistence of financiers and other producers to include some nudity in White Coats, and how this eventually led to the subversive inspiration for the flesh that the film does ultimately bare.

Other supplemental extras include a nice chunk of behind-the-scenes
footage and a 10-minute gag and gaffe reel, which replicates some
material that runs under the closing credits. There’s also a collection
of trailers for other First Look releases, and 13 minutes of cast
auditions for three of the interns — Viv Leacock, Ingrid Kavelaars and
Christine Chatelain. B- (Movie) B- (Disc)