Loren Dean looks as if he'd lost his way from Walton's Mountain as the therapist of the title, a mystery man who wanders into a town, also called Mumford, and through his common sense, knack for listening, and blank smile sets many of the citizens' troubled psyches to rest, including a number of invidious female stereotypes -- an anorectic teenager (Zooey Deschanel), a shopaholic ditz (Mary McDonnell), a depressive nudge (Hope Davis). Mumford's treatment? An appropriate male partner. As Davis's character confesses, what she's needed all along was a man just like him. McDonnell is more blunt -- she's looking for a good "shtup."

Mumford has secrets of his own, as revealed in a bizarre mid-film flashback and an Unsolved Mysteries broadcast. But despite the efforts of three malevolent females -- a rival psychologist, a termagant mother, and a draconian judge -- his brand of facile and unethical pop psychology prevails. Maybe Kasdan might check with his own therapist about his woman complex, or at least learn the correct definition of "transference."