Aged, and filled with unfortunate messages, but beautifully acted and still good

Rating: 8/10 (11 December 2019)

When I first watched this movie, when it came out, I thought it was great - a wonderful, evergreen movie that could not possibly lose its shine. I watched it a few times over the years. And more recently I watched it with my wife a few days ago.
And... well, there was a question that suddenly entered my mind just before I pressed play, which was, "how much misoginy is built into this movie?" My memory was hazy, but I suspected the answer was "quite a bit"... And I wasn't wrong, sadly.
(minor spoilers)
The central plot is essentially Beauty and the Beast. Monster falls in love with Beauty, who eventually redeems him and turns him into a better person. The protagonist, Melvin, masterfully played by Jack Nicholson, may not be as hairy as the fairy tale, but he starts off as a racist, misogynist, homophobic, rude and aggressive straight old white guy. To belabour the point, they have him throw a cute dog down a garbage chute. In short, Melvin is bad through and through. To make this worse, this terrible behaviour of his is pinned on his mental health - he has OCD, therefore that excuses him being such a terrible human. It's like they were trying to play intersectionality bingo and annoy all the minority groups at once.
Throughout the tale, Melvin continues to be very unpleasant (the profanity filter forbids me from using the right word here) to all kinds of people. He uses his considerable wealth as a successful author to sort out a medical problem that the poverty-stricken waitress Carol (masterfully played by Helen Hunt) can't solve herself, and then leverages that to coerce her into going on a road trip with her and his gay neighbour whom he's reluctantly (mostly because she might go on the trip) agreed to take to see his parents.
During this trip, he continues to behave appallingly to everyone. At one point, after having it demanded of him under threat of her walking out of the restaurant, Melvin manages to summon one little compliment for the woman he apparently desires. He is immediately rewarded with both praise ("this is the best compliment I've ever received") and a kiss. Eventually, without having changed all that much, just maybe softened up a little bit, but still being his weird and unpleasant self, Melvin essentially gets the girl.
Along this is a side story where the gay neighbour Simon (masterfully played by Greg Kinnear) is beaten up, loses his flat and is broke (also due to medical bills; welcome to the US), and loses his inspiration to paint, which was how he earned money. He is also miraculously saved by the mere nearness of Carol, who seems to truly be a fairy tale princess, since she apparently not only turns Melvin into a slightly less awful human being, but also inspires a gay artist who normally paints male figures into painting female figures. Do I smell a whiff of some kind of "she can turn gay people straight" essence here? Maybe. Either way it's pretty dubious.
So, in 2019, I found this loveable movie harder to love.
What saves it, and deserves the 4 star rating, is the great performances by the actors, who bring this flawed script to life like the masters of their craft that they are. And when it finishes, your heart may well feel a bit warmed.
But I wouldn't show it to my children, or to anyone lacking the ability to come to their own conclusions about the biases of the script. The underlying messages are too toxic.