Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Crappy film

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Few era comedies mood achieve high standards today, this is one of those. Even funnier is the fact that the story is based on real events, with a very decent staging era with characters that his spirit ahead of his era at times seem somewhat anachronistic, however the highlight of the movie focuses on the well done humor that reflected situations that marked a revolution at early the role of women in the nineteenth century before Billie Jean King.Putting together a frustrated doctor, the industrial revolution, Maggie Gyllenhaal (more like a Lisa Simpson adult) sexual repression and ultraconservative British are the perfect recipe for the invention of a device "doctor" used to cure the "disease" of hysteria.

Yes I give this movie an 8!!!My spoiler would be I didn't watch the whole movie, I turned it on at the part where the Doctor was showing his "treatment" on a woman and had that red curtain tray thing over her pelvic area!! I had to keep watching! I had no idea what this movie was about, but when I actually watched it I liked it. It is not the norm of what I would choose for a movie. WHen it was over, I immediately called my girlfriend and said that I found the perfect girls night in movie over wine and snacks!!!!! I gave it a high rating because for what the movie was based on the actors were awesome, and everyone was so poised, but of course we all "know" !!Great Flick, great acting!!

Hysteria is a great idea for a movie. I mean, a movie about the invention of the vibrator? Thank you! I wanted to know how that came about (not sarcasm) but the execution was a bit wanting. The actors selected were great, each with capable acting abilities and each with commendable works in the past, but here together they had no chemistry, at least romantic chemistry. The whole time I felt that they were playing brother and sister.Maggie Gyllenhal's character was a wild and untamed woman with a brain (for the time) and Hugh Dancy's character was the somewhat uptight doctor who believed in modern medicine. The script wasn't all there, it felt unexplained at some points and overly used in other areas. (as in an over use of speech between characters who seem as if they cannot convey thought with eyes or facial expressions alone.) But strangely you want to know these characters, you root for what they want for the world and you believe that in what they say and in their beliefs. The movie is not exciting but it is new and smart in some ways. You really see the funny and silly sides of medicine. The movie isn't as good as it could have been, but it doesn't quite fall flat either. It's worth a watch so don't write it off.

Any movie that manages to offer you some knowledge of a little known piece of medical history, to give you a lot of laughs from beginning to end and that manages to mix in some social commentary along the way has to be a winner. The fact that "Hysteria" manages to do all that is first of all a great credit to Stephen and Jonah Lisa Dyer and Howard Gensler, who were all involved in the crafting of the story. It's wonderfully told. It' also wonderfully performed by pretty much the entire cast, mainly Hugh Dancy, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jonathon Pryce, with some strong supporting performances thrown in, and director Tanya Wexler moves the story along smartly and crisply. There's really no "filler" but this also doesn't feel rushed. It's perfectly paced. So, technically, this is a marvellous movie.It captures attention from its rather unusual subject matter - the invention of the vibrator. It causes, I suppose, a bit of a blush at times - particularly as you watch a variety of women, feet in stirrups, reacting to the "treatment" they're receiving, first manually from their doctors, and then using this magical new device. Let's be honest. Who knew that the vibrator was actually used very legitimately to offer a new form of treatment to women diagnosed with a condition that was recognized until the 1950's - hysteria. As one watches the "treatments" (all shown with a maximum amount of discretion and modesty, of course) one is tempted to think of these doctors as just dirty old men getting their kicks, but the movie makes clear that they really weren't. They believed in this condition and in this treatment, which relieved the symptoms of hysteria by bringing on a "paroxysm" - medical jargon for an orgasm, which had to be called a paroxysm because - well - women just didn't have orgasms, did they? It's actually quite fascinating to see the portrayal of medicine at the time (the movie is set in London in the 1880's) and we see not only hysteria and its treatment but debates about germs and the causes of infections. And it is quite funny, in a sexually suggestive (but not really sexual) way.What I really liked about this, though, was that in the midst of the fun about the invention of the vibrator, there was an interesting social commentary going on, revolving largely around the role of women, the debate over female suffrage, the treatment of the poor at the time. That was all woven quite seamlessly into the story.Now, having said all that, let's note that the history of the development of the vibrator isn't correctly portrayed. Dr. Granville (Dancy) didn't actually invent the machine for the purpose of treating hysteria in women, but rather for treating muscular disorders in men, and it was other doctors who discovered it a useful aid in the treatment of hysteria. I also haven't found any reference to the romance portrayed between Granville and Charlotte (Gyllenhaal) - whose character serves primarily to bring a feminist perspective to the story. (Granville's wife's name was Mary Ellen Ormerod.)Historical inaccuracies aside, though, the movie is still a lot of fun to watch, and does offer a fair representation of some of the attitudes toward women and the poor that existed at the time. (8/10)