Emotional intelligence

Rating: 9/10 (12 March 2017)

What this film has and which no Marvel comic blockbuster has is 'emotional intelligence'. In this case, basically, the film is emotionally literate. It is dealing with the raw emotions of real people.
Speaking as a guy, I don't like that Jack Nicholson's character Melvin, for all his flaws, ends up so much in debit to Helen Hunt's character Carol and her hard edges. Guys aren't always in the wrong and it is usually the case that the gals like to put us permanently on the defensive. I don't like that in real life and I don't like that in film. Helen Hunt's character Carol has an ailing son for whom to care and she is a fierce mother, there is nothing wrong with that, but Helen Hunt's Carol is the kind of woman from whom perhaps someone like Melvin should actually have stayed away. She has some very hard edges to her, for whatever reason, that could cut a guy every which way, although, to be fair to her, you sense that in her fierceness she can show a fierce loyalty, too. Speaking as a guy, however, I am not sure it is a happy ending for OCD but otherwise sensitive Melvin to end up with her.
But I say again that what I like about the film is its emotional intelligence. It is about the ordinary human emotions, the emotions which make us human, or lacking which make us not so human. So many films today are emotionally illiterate for young males in America, Europe or Asia or wherever, who are emotionally illiterate but want something sexy in the picture and in which people get killed and things get blown up every ten minutes or so. For the Hollywood accountants, this is what puts bottoms on seats, brings in the dough.
I am not sure that 'As good as it gets' could be made today for where is he Jack Nicholson or the Helen Hunt with the subtlety to make it.
The film has one of my all-time favourite scenes. Melvin has been to see his psychiatrist but he is still not happy afterwards, about his life or life in general. So he appeals to the people in the waiting room: "Is this as good as it gets?" Is this not the question that any intelligent person must have asked themselves at some point? Repeatedly.