How good a romantic comedy can get ...

Rating: 9/10 (23 November 2012)

There is a weird exhilarating feeling watching the compulsive obsessive Melvin Udall delivering so many insults, homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic and misogynistic, as if he allowed himself to express his personal grudge against the whole world. But I guess the character ceases to be detestable only on the account that he's played by Jack Nicholson, we can easily suspect that he was written with 'Jack' in mind for only he can elevate a curmudgeon to such a level of reverse likability, maybe because the eyes betray a touch of vulnerability that try to cover his expressive eyebrows. Yet, although it's not too hazardous to assume that by the end of the film, the inner goodness of 'Uncle Scrooge' will finally blossom, when the movie starts with Udall throwing of the neighbor's dog Verdell in the trash chute, we're left with mixed feelings.
Thankfully, the relative vileness of good old Udall is compensated by the presence of one of the sweetest female characters ever written for a romantic comedy. Helent Hunt plays a sort of everyday 'Dorothy Boyd'. I wonder by the way if Albert Brooks took some inspiration from "Jerry Maguire" (I personally doubt it's a coincidence that Cuba Gooding Jr. stars as the neighbor's boyfriend) but it would be reduce Helen Hunt's role through a comparison, the movie glows out of her touching sensitivity. Provided she lives with her mother, her son suffers from a chronic asthma, so she doesn't have time to think for herself, her performance transcends the cinematic banality of her situation. She wonderfully plays the kind of women so constantly in a state of panic and anxiety that any relief could leave her with some emotional alter-effects. In a way, like Udall, she's also depending on habits that canceled off all her chances to find love, to even dream about it.
The two characters are meant to be together, but I concede that's a feeling guided by movies standards. I doubt that a man like Udall would be with a woman the age of his daughter. Maybe an older woman would have fit the story, or a younger man, or maybe we shouldn't be too optimistic about what happens two weeks after the closing scene, but once the movie establishes the characters, and before they end up together, it's all about the human interactions, the ups-and-downs between two lonely hearts taken in a sentimental maze. Their relationship can almost be compared to these labyrinth games where you have to guess from which point to start to get to the end, only this time, you can't cheat by starting from the end, everything has to be done by the book and God, how hard it gets for these two, even by romantic comedies' standards.
But if as a rom-com, "As Good as it Gets" delivers the classic material, as a human comedy, it's a wonderful exploration of the way different people can influence each other for the better, how love and friendship can be planted by the seeds of generosity. I insist on the human comedy term, because general romantic comedies rely on two main characters with foils meant to separate or reunite them. "As Good as it Gets" is enriched by the addition of the gay neighbor, an ill-fated artist painter who's beaten by one of his models' friends after a botched burglary. Greg Kinnear is Simon, a young man whose life totally falls apart and can only find hope through the help of the very guy who threw his Verdell in the trash chute. And Verdell plays a significant part too, would have he been shown in the poster otherwise?
Verdell is the first intrusion in Udall's solitary life, but the cohabitations goes surprisingly well, Udall plays "Always Look on the Bright Side of his Life" (a priceless joke by itself) and the dog eats the bacon, at the end, Udall and Verdell acclimated to each other and Simon realizes that if the dog liked him, maybe he's not such a bad guy. Basically, the whole film consists on Udall revealing more generous sides of his personalities, but ruining everything at the most crucial moment. When he hires a doctor to take care of Carol's son, without any costs for her, he not only saves the boy, but also changes Carol and her mother's life. He asks nothing in return, except when the opportunity comes, to accompany him, while he's driving Simon to his parents. We suspect the trip will be pivotal for the three characters, but it's all in the way it happens and how Simon acts as a perfect buffer between Carol and Udall.
And the love-and-hate relationship reaches a beautiful paroxysm during a restaurant dinner, when Udall makes such a despicable remark; he's forced to counterbalance it by a nice word. Carol begs for a compliment not because she's desperate but because the moment is too romantic to be ruined, they have to act as normal persons for once. After a confused monologue, Udall finds the perfect wording with the unforgettable "You make me want to be a better man", which is the "You had me at 'hello'" of the film, but more meaningfully. Yet we're so used to his personality that we expect the word too many. The relationship seems doomed unless Carol stops being obsessive of having a better man, and does her best to look on the bright side on Udall.
You know how good "As Good as it Gets" is? It makes you realize how some romantic comedies were not as good as you thought. Naturally, at the end, the obligatory happy ending kind of belittle the whole originality reached by the film, yet the feeling is swept off by a total relief, to see finally these two tortured characters having a break, and enjoying a good time, we hope to be as long, or perhaps, as good it gets.