As Good As Jack and Helen Can Get!

Rating: 10/10 (25 December 2009)

"As Good As It Gets" ranks as the best Jack Nicholson movie in ages, and it is a pretty nutty comedy, too. Considering the crap that Nicholson has appeared in lately, "As Good As It Gets" is easily the most memorable film that he has starred in since the 1980s. Talk about stinkers and sinkers, specifically "Blood & Wine," "Mars Attacks," "The Crossing Guard," "Wolf," and "Hoffa," were as disposable as they were objectionable. Top heavy with multi-dimensional characters, "As Good As It Gets" generates its crisp plot from the recurring collisions that occur between flaky characters. Uneven, often predictable, but consistently entertaining at 138 minutes in length, "As Good As It Gets" unspools like a long, leisurely situation comedy. "Terms of Endearment" writer & director James L. Brooks spices up this superlative comedy with several politically incorrect one-liners and charms some scintillating performances from both Helen Hunt and Greg Kinnear. The cutest performance belongs to a scene-stealing pooch, an adorable Brussels Griffon doggie that resembles a "Star Wars" Ewok.
Mark Andrus co-wrote "As Good As It Gets" with Brooks. The plot details the back and forth relationships between two Manhattan apartment dwellers, novelist Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson of "Batman") and gay painter Simon Bishop (Greg Kinnear of "Sabrina") and woebegone waitress Carol Connelly (Helen Hunts of "What Women Want"), a single-parent mom who befriends Bishop but spars constantly with Udall. Brooks and Andrus take their time laying out and setting up the action about two guys, a girl and a dog. At times, "As Good As It Gets" seems indulgently slow, but the characters and their dialogue are rewarding and the ending is definitely worth the waiting. While Brooks and Andrus are developing their storyline, they criticize HMOs, debunk homosexuality, and invigorate a moth-eaten May/December romance with a gutsy vitality that most mainstream Hollywood movies shun.
Nicholson shines as middle-aged romantic novelist Melvin Udall. He is somebody Archie Bunker might initially like if Melvin got chummy enough with him. But Melvin doesn't appear to like anybody. His quirky behavior qualifies him as obsessive-compulsive. He lives a strict, regimented life. He scrubs his hands with a fresh bar of soap every time, brings his own plastic utensils when dining out in restaurants and hates to step on a crack or a line in the pavement. Clearly, Melvin is a classic Nicholson character. He is as insidious and snide as Randle P. McMurphy was in the 1975 Oscar winning film "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" and Billy Budduskey in Hal Ashby's "The Last Detail" (1973).
Nevertheless, far from being a stereotype, Melvin is allowed to evolve and change as a character as he interacts with Connelly and Bishop. Trouble enters paradise in the Andrus and Brooks' script when Vincent (Skeet Ulrich of "Scream"), a gay street hustler posing for Bishop, sets him up for a robbery. Not only is Bishop robbed, but the thugs also nearly cripple him. It is not often that Hollywood shows queers battling queers. When Bishop's lover Frank Sachs (Cuba Gooding, Jr. of "Boat Trip") puts him in the hospital, Frank convinces Melvin with threats to take care of Bishop's fuzzy little dog Verdell. Surprisingly, Melvin and the Verdell develop a friendship. When Melvin isn't letting the mutt get the best of him, he romances Connelly and helps her with her son Spencer who is bed-ridden.
Indeed, "As Good As It Gets" gets rather sappy. You know you're not watching a typical Hollywood opus when an older man gets the younger woman without getting her in the sack. Bishop, the gay character here, redefines traditional homosexual behavior. "As Good As It Gets" is ideal fare for moviegoers who prefer unusual but sentimental flicks with solid performances, especially from Nicholson, Kinnear and Hunt, sizzling dialogue, and against-the-grain messages.