In Doc Hollywood young Michael J. Fox having completed his residency looks like he has his future by the short hairs. He's going into plastic surgery, much money to be made there and nobody dies. Usually the only thing that approaches a dearth in fatality like that is dermatology. But a traffic jam on I-95 and a couple of stray cows on the back road he's traveling gets him into a gentle jackpot of an accident. It just happens that he plowed into a freshly put up fence by the local judge Roberts Blossom.<br /><br />For the first offense in the town of Grady, Florida Fox is given community service in the local hospital where crotchety old doctor Barnard Hughes is ready to pack it in. In their own hospitable ways the good citizens of Grady set out to make the man Hughes calls, Doc Hollywood welcome. There's one particular citizen played by Julie Warner who wants to offer the ultimate in hospitality even though her ever present steady boyfriend Woody Harrelson is around.<br /><br />In many ways Doc Hollywood is an updated version of the Paramount classic Welcome Stranger with Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald, and Joan Caulfield. In that one however, the town folks don't take to city boy Bing right away, here they're going out of their way to make Fox welcome as they know that Hughes will not be there forever.<br /><br />One of the really nice things about Doc Hollywood is the impeccable casting of some of the rustic characters you might find in the Florida wilds. Two of the best are Eyde Byrde as Nurse Packer who runs the hospital like a drill sergeant, a kinder, gentler and black version of nurse Ratched. And it took me a while to realize the actor playing the rustic southern mayor was David Ogden Stiers, formerly Charles Emerson Winchester of Hahvard and the 4077 MASH unit. For those who best remember Stiers as Major Winchester, this performance will come as a very pleasant shock.<br /><br />If you saw Welcome Stranger than you have a good idea of how Doc Hollywood turns out. I think it was one of the best films of the previous decade, a pleasant and gentle diversion of entertainment.