A fantastic film with a great lead performance

Rating: 9/10 (20 August 2013)

A friendship starts to develop between a gay artist, a single mother working as a waitress, and a misanthropist, when the artist is left hospitalised after an attack. The three start to become somewhat dependent on one another, against their own expectations.
'As Good As It Gets' is one of those movies that I remember seeing the trailer of, but never felt the need to see. Just seemed like a boring rom-com with actors I didn't really care about. 'As Good As It Gets' is, in fact, an incredibly funny and quirky movie that was fully deserving of the Oscars that it won. The script is the strong-point of the movie. Issues of homophobia, racism, misogyny and countless other prejudices are touched with a sharp, cynical twang. Emotional moments are slapped in the face by cutting jokes, never letting the audience settle in.
A script is only as good as the people who recite it, though, and there's a reason why Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt both won Oscars for their performances. Sure, everyone is else as just as good, but the two leads are magnetic. Nicholson does a perfect job of playing the grumpy Melvin Udall, and he never really stops being grumpy; and this works excellently in response to Helen Hunt's exhausted but ever-optimistic Carol Connelly. The chemistry between the two is top-notch.
You could argue that, perhaps, that the film goes on too long. It's over two hours long, when ninety minutes would have been absolutely fine. That extra time allows the film-makers to populate the film with other slightly bizarre characters, all adding to the general acerbic aura of the film. However, it's two hours of excellent acting, breathing beautiful life into some excellently written dialogue. Definitely worth a watch.