I tried.

Rating: 6/10 (27 November 1998)

I tried to like this as much as everyone told me I had to. I came into the film thinking that not liking this movie condemned me to be lumped into the group of people who only watch Adam Sandler movies. I left it thinking that it's the people who watch Adam Sandler movies who looked at this and saw a work of art.
First of all, let me say this: it's not that bad. It's a fairly well made movie. But it shouldn't be an Oscar-worthy film, it shouldn't be the 55th best movie of all time (according to IMDB voters) and it's not worth all the hype. Helen Hunt's and Nicholson's performances are overrated-in fact, if anyone deserved an Oscar for this film, in my mind it's Greg Kinnear.
Let me defend my statement that Nicholson's performance is overrated. I have the feeling, and this was confirmed by others who told me about the movie, was that the idea of Melvin Udall was that as you gained insight on his condition, you were supposed to feel sorry for him, or at least root for him to get the girl. Nicholson supposedly opened the mind of someone inflicted with OCD so we could understand. Well, as much as I love Nicholson, I hated Melvin Udall. The longer the movie went on, the more I rooted for Helen Hunt's character to just move away and not leave a forwarding address. My read of Nicholson's character was not, first and foremost, a sick man: it was a total b******.
Now, I know the idea of his character was an anti-hero who finds redemption. But I couldn't root for him, so he wasn't an anti-hero; what's more, at the end he wasn't redeemed-in fact he was rewarded for bad behavior. (I'm sorry, but OCD patients are not required to be offensive. Some of the behavior, such as locking the door and bringing one's own silverware, are true to OCD people. But finding any offensive remark to make about another person has nothing to do with OCD and everything to do with just being a caustic person.) He was still the same jerk, he just found someone willing to put up with it. Hooray for him.
What I'm basically trying to say is that the movie didn't work for me-I feel that it fell short of its goal.