A satire about the troubled state of the American health-care system sounds like a good idea. Stocking that satire with James Spader, Albert Brooks, Wallace Shawn, Helen Mirren, Kyra Sedgwick, and Anne Bancroft also seems wise, as does employing an occasionally great director (Sidney Lumet) who has shown an aptitude for scathing humor (Network). So why does Critical Care fail? For starters, it seems like a different movie from scene to scene. Spader plays a young, ambitious, lecherous resident who, in a moment of passion, gives legal advice to Sedgwick regarding her vegetative father. Soon he finds himself blackmailed into involvement with a legal battle between Sedgwick and her bible-thumping sister. Meanwhile, in a more dramatic subplot, cancer-surviving nurse Mirren sympathetically ministers to a patient kept alive against his wishes; he repeatedly hallucinates a satanic figure played by Shawn. These scenes make little sense, but then, neither do Spader's segments, in which real issues are raised only to be dodged in an almost cartoonish manner. Brooks is funny (and practically unrecognizable) as an alcoholic chief; he seems to be appearing in a broad farce instead of a mediocre dramatic comedy. It's got a few bright moments, and it's a fine example of good intentions gone awry, but Critical Care is strictly forgettable.