Comedy-of-ills isn't aging well

Rating: 5/10 (18 October 2006)

This looked really fresh in 1997, but the story of cantankerous, people-phobic writer who manages to charm both a waitress and a gay male neighbor isn't the touching look at "ordinary lives" that it once was. Hatred and hostility in the world has now made Jack Nicholson's leading characterization less funny and more despicable (he calls the gay man's friends "fudgepackers" and insults the waitress almost continually). Helen Hunt gives more here than she ever did on her TV-sitcom "Mad About You", but her Oscar-win for Best Actress came for just one really astounding scene (at her restaurant when tells Nicholson off); the rest of her time on screen is spent exercising actorly tics (faraway smiles and pungent remarks). Greg Kinnear, as Nicholson's neighbor, does well with a shallow, insulting role, and poor Cuba Gooding, Jr. gets lost in the shuffle as Kinnear's business partner. The film is long and windy--it's full of comedic hot air--and the second-act transformation of several characters is done without much thought or insight, yet a great deal of Hollywood-ized superficiality. ** from ****