Before Dr. Phil, Dr. Drew, and Dr. Laura began their careers as radio and TV advice dispensers, Ruth Westheimer was the pioneering therapist with whom Americans were on a strictly first-name basis. Who better to broach the subject of sex in graphic yet straightforward and wholly non-threatening terms than someone resembling your grandmother? Therein lies the key to Dr. Ruth’s success. Orphaned by the Holocaust as age 10, the 90-year-old, thrice-wed, inexhaustibly upbeat media sensation put her celebrity to good use, first by advising her audience on how to overcome personal feelings of sexual inadequacy, and later by dispelling myths about the AIDS virus. She laughs off being labeled a feminist, but when pressed by her granddaughters, the only objection to the characterization she could come up with was an aversion to the arcane habit of bra-burning. But as much as I desire to laud the subject, there is one major flaw in director Ryan White’s portrait of her:. relying on animated passages to take us through the Nazi occupation was one big, sentimentalizing mistake. (2019) — Scott Marks