Yes It Is Good & Betters!

Rating: 10/10 (17 March 2000)

Well, SCOTTMCON finally got around to seeing this one .. and he's a perennial Jack Nicholson, and a romantic.
It is very worth your time; and very worth a Golden Globe Award or Oscar for Best Actor, Best Actress & Best Film..
This warm Brooklyn based comdey takes a close look at three human beings interlinked by their circumstances ... Jack Nichoson .. the writer ... Helen Hunt .. the waitress at his favorite restaurant (West Side) and Greg Kinnear as a painting disciple of Paul Cadmus living next door to Nicholson ... and recovering from a beating/mugging .. and worried at losing his home & studio.
Nicholson plays the New York literate & cycnic to the hilt. His life is so shaped, so arranged that he becomes deranged at displacements Like his favorite waitress' day off..
Helen is his favorite waitress .. he is at ease with her; he falls in love with her ; she thinks he's a little crazy but "worth an investment?"
These people meet and share their lives in this fine human comedy bringng Hunt her Oscar and her transit from TV & stage to the cinema.
It is a Nicholson "tour de froce" .. and New York City and her people never looked tougher, kinder, friendlier, nor more real.
Cuba Gooding Jr "cleans up" with a fine supporting role as a foil for Nicholson. All acceptbale New York manners apply ... and Nicholson behaves as if he's re-learning them. Hunt is a sympathy attraction as a table-waitning working mother whose looks, and sick son attracts the pennies and sympathy of Nicholson.
Never selling herself short .. she asks her mother: "Why can't I have a normal boyfriend like everyone else? Someone who doesn't worry me about going beserk or losing control of himself?"
"That's what everyone wnts!" says Mom ...'They don't exist!"
Roll and relax with this one .. and see if "macho" writer can spark and prompt people back to life and refine himself into love.
Hat's off to the Baltimore weekend scene as Helen Hunt's character declares "My drink's folliowng me!" ..a comedic mannered interlude leftoevr from the days when a man or woman on the make didn't take her drink from the bar to avert "hustling".
Hunt doesn't hustle. ..she just holds out .. the prize is human calculus!
Give it Romance ... *****/5 & *****/5 overall