`PATCH ADAMS' NEEDS A NEW RX.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Insulin! Insulin!

The ``Patch Adams'' sugar shock factor is remarkably high, even by Robin Williams movie standards. A supposedly true story about an irrepressible clown who upsets medical conventions by trying to heal through laughter, there's so much cloying, contrived sap clogging the film's arteries that not a sticky second of it feels honest.

The film claims to advocate doctors acting more human and less objectively (read: nicer) toward their patients. A dubious concept in itself - who really wants a hug instead of scientific judgment when they're sick? - but one we could theoretically swing with for entertainment purposes. Yet Williams' relentlessly optimistic, impossibly imaginative medical student is idealized beyond anything resembling a mere mortal.

So much for putting the humanity back in medicine.

Actually, when we first encounter Hunter ``Patch'' Adams in the 1960s, he is recognizably vulnerable. In fact, he's suicidal, but smart enough to check himself into a mental facility before he hurts himself. There he discovers that the psychiatrists don't have a sense of humor and concludes that's the reason why the inmates are still crazy.

Vowing to help the hurting, and utterly oblivious to the fact that his smug personality could drive many people nuts, Adams checks out of the institution and into the Medical College of Virginia. He rarely studies there but still makes top grades, which annoys the heck out of his snooty, brilliant roommate (``Happiness' '' Philip Seymour Hoffman) and the beautiful, all-business classmate Carin (blond Julia Roberts look-alike Monica Potter).

While these two might as well have ``bound to come around'' stamped on their foreheads, one guy who's clearly not going to be won over by Patch's antics is the humorless (what else?) Dean Walcott (Bob Gunton). The self-controlled meanie takes great exception to Patch's antics at the school's hospital, where the funnyman delights leukemia kids by falling down a lot and wearing a clown nose made from an enema bulb.

His academic future in jeopardy, Patch opens a guerrilla free clinic out in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains (how destitute patients get to the isolated spot is not explained). This gets him in deeper trouble with real medical authorities, resulting in the inevitable courtroom/tribunal scene where Patch's utterly nonsensical, emotional defense makes all the little leukemia kids who've been schlepped to the gallery cheer.

And, of course, laugh.

Even when it tries to get serious, ``Patch Adams'' is terminally whimsical. When our hero's unexamined ``I'm OK, you're OK'' credo inadvertently causes the death of a loved one, he's briefly wracked by a normal human response: guilt. But his depression lasts only as long as it takes for a butterfly to cross his path.

Astonishingly, this Frankenstein monster of a feel-good movie is the work of director Tom Shadyac and writer Steve Oedekerk. Although a strain of sentimentality has run through Shadyac's previous, actually funny movies, we remember ``Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,'' ``Liar Liar'' and ``The Nutty Professor'' remake mainly for their outrageousness. For his part, Oedekerk worked on ``Professor'' and the gross-out ``Ace Ventura'' sequel.

Synthetic treacle was the last thing to be expected from either of these guys. But then, that's what often happens when anarchic wits attempt to warm hearts for the holidays.

Just ask Robin Williams. If anybody knows about this syndrome, he does.

The facts

The film: ``Patch Adams'' (PG-13; language, adult and serious medical situations, children in jeopardy).

The stars: Robin Williams, Monica Potter, Daniel London, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bob Gunton.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Tom Shadyac. Written by Steve Oedekerk, based on the book ``Gesundheit: Good Health Is a Laughing Matter'' by Hunter Doherty Adams and Maureen Mylander. Produced by Barry Kemp, Mike Farrell, Marvin Minoff and Charles Newirth. Released by Universal Pictures.

Running time: One hour, 50 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: two stars