The "lovable" jerk trope

Rating: 5/10 (30 May 2019)

To be honest, I really liked the first half of this movie. I thought Helen Hunt's Carol and Greg Kinnear's Simon were very likable and realistic people, while Jack Nicholson's Melvin was, even though not very likable, an interesting character. The dialogue was good, and I enjoy the concept of ordinary people interacting as a plot. I loved when Melvin got busted in repeating angry lines he clearly thought were clever himself, while he had just heard them from another guy.
The real annoyance with the movie came for me, when I realised this was building up to a romantic relationship between Melvin and Carol, while Melvin did not show any significant character development. I cannot see in what world Carol would fall for this homofobic, racist, misogynistic, antisemistic old creep who makes weird smirky faces at every interaction (sorry Jack Nicholson) - and why Simon would end up loving him. Yes, a few times he used a lot of money to make their lives better and we, as the audience felt sorry for him at times - I am not hating on him and I wanted to see him develop into a better person. We have just not been shown in the movie that he can be nice to be around, so when Carol says, she "enjoys his company" it does not make any sense.
Also, this should be a drama and not a comedy movie (in my opinion). I don't think there was a lot of jokes or a humorous kind of plot, and this leaves me thinking that the categorization as a "comedy" was based on the hateful lines Melvin was spitting out all the time. Was that supposed to be funny?
Anyway, I liked the whole setup of the movie, and I was maybe too eager to love it. There was a lot of great details in the script. But when the hero of the movie is a creepy jerk who did not change and got the sweet single mom anyway, I gave up on liking it. I left the movie wondering if the script was written by an old jerk who accidently wrote himself into the movie.