Patch Adams

“Laughter is contagious.”

Hunter "Patch" Adams (Robin Williams) walks into medical school in the late 1960s and starts making patients laugh, which the dean, Walcott (Bob Gunton), considers a risk to his career and the school's good name. Tom Shadyac follows him through the wards in red clown noses, with Mitch (Philip Seymour Hoffman) among those he meets. The film rests on the plain idea that a doctor treats a person, and that a laugh counts as part of the treatment.