Contemporary Classic

Rating: 10/10 (24 December 2006)

Jack Nicholson, from what I've seen so far, has never given a bad performance in his life. This is no exception to that claim. Even more, As Good As It Gets is a slight departure from his trademark screen persona, a snakily charming, confident, and dry man with a penchant for almost comically devilish eyebrow movements and sharky grins. Instead, here he is an older man with insecurities so overwhelming that he desperately hides it all underneath a wry and crude meanness that he jabs at nearly everyone he meets, harming them first before they can do what he fears out of a corrosive neuroses, which is that they'll harm his fragile ego first. He only begins to realize how much he yearns to be liked after so many unfortunate things happen to his neighbor, inadvertently causing so many fortunate things to happen to him, giving him a taste of how good life gets before things once again even out, making him want to become a better man.
Helen Hunt's tremendously human performance stands out almost as far as Nicholson's, a feat that has since the 1970s been quite difficult to accomplish. To equal Nicholson's naturally upstaging presence is quite impressive. She seems almost as if she was born to play the waitress whose ill son is constantly on her mind but always keeps that winning smile on her face. She is very funny and deeply felt, imperfect and in such a realistic way.
The film's breakthrough comes from Greg Kinnear, whose charm affects the sensitive role he plays, a homosexual painter, constantly under the heterosexual gun, often held by the nasty shell of the Nicholson character, and unfairly given the inarguably shortest end of the straw, yet always patient and accepting enough, until he reaches a point. Kinnear has an airy promptness and propensity for physical drama that make him a perfect counterpart for the other two stars.
Something I find infinitely appealing about As Good As It Gets is its focus on the dog as a character. The dog is billed (as three different dogs) in the credits, and is developed as a character, as an interesting friendship grows between him and the Nicholson character, and grows into an adapter for the relationship between Nicholson and Kinnear.
As Good As It Gets is one of the most well-written films I've seen recently. In it is hilarious humor, heartfelt character drama, and a chain of seemingly unrelated events with three different people rippling towards each other. Its extensive running time is due to its passionate development and concentration on these three very different people and their colliding lives.