AS GOOD AS IT GETS *** (out of ****) Starring Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear, Cuba Gooding Jr., Skeet Ulrich, Shirley Knight, and Yeardley Smith Directed by James L. Brooks & written by Mark Andrus and James L. Brooks 1997 PG13 Fortunately for us “As Good As It Gets” is not as good as movies can get.  Like “A Beautiful Mind,” this is one of those movies you see, you enjoy, and you move on, only to discover months later, with much head-scratching, that it’s being showered with awards.  It won Academy Awards for leads Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt, who give fine performances and the kind that the Oscars like.  They have speeches, tears, and new facial expressions for every third word, though in the movie’s defense there aren’t a whole lot of tears. “As Good As It Gets” follows the comic subgenre of the Mean Schmuck Who Turns Out To Be a Nice Guy.  There’s nothing wrong with old formulae getting dusted off now and again, and the Mean Schmuck etc. probably reached its latest zenith with the quintessential arms-waving-like-a-lunatic Al Pacino performance in “Scent of a Woman.”   Bill Murray seems to make one of these movies every couple of years, the best being the delightful “Groundhog Day.”  Making the Schmuck a Schmuck is the easy part; he just needs to be self-centered, obnoxious, cynical, and have a good tongue for insults.  But it’s crucial in these films that we also see something in him that we like.  We have to be able to admire his insults—some of them are things we think but would never say—and we have to be able to glimpse his goodness early on. The Schmuck in “As Good As It Gets” is a reclusive novelist played by Jack Nicholson (this is at least the second time Nicholson has played a novelist, the first being “The Shining,” when he was about ten times as antisocial).  He lives in Manhattan and has written something like sixty-two successful novels, allowing him to live a comfortable life in an apartment where he has never let anyone else set foot.  Nicholson’s an obsessive-compulsive:  everyday he eats at the same restaurant at the same time from the same waitress at the same table, using his own plastic cutlery.  He can’t step on cracks in the sidewalk or touch anything outside his apartment without gloves. None of that is what makes Nicholson a Schmuck.  What makes him a Schmuck is that he’s really, really mean.  He can’t wait for his favorite table, he can’t talk to his waitress (Helen Hunt) without bickering, and he’s ensconced in a feud with his gay neighbor (Greg Kinnear) concerning the neighbor’s dog, a feud that includes sticking the mutt down a garbage chute.  In a dark way Nicholson is funny, but he often crosses that important line between funny and disturbing, where we laugh for a while until we realize this guy has problems.  He even uses ethnic and homophobic slurs, not because he really feels that way but because he’s so desperate to get his hands on something vicious to say.  The crucial redeeming factor for Nicholson is that we sense a frightened man inside. The change from Schmuck to Nice Guy begins when Kinnear is hospitalized and Nicholson is forced to look after his arch-nemesis’ despised dog.  This is one adorable mutt, with teeny-tiny little legs and great big vacant eyes.  Who can’t love a puppy?  The dog doesn’t turn Nicholson into a nice guy, but it is a starting place, and soon Nicholson is asking his favorite waitress Hunt about her young son’s health problems, which he overhears her discussing with other waitresses. Do the mean novelist and the sweet waitress fall in love?  Do the mean homophobe and the gay neighbor become friends?  Does Nicholson learn to not be such a punk all the time and overcome some of his habits?  Well, duh, but movies, like life, are often about journeys and not destinations.  Nicholson’s journey is perpetually hindered because for every two steps he takes forward his big fat mouth usually takes him a step back.  He can only be nice for so long before something slips out and he has to win back Kinnear and Hunt over again. One of the clever things about “As Good As It Gets” is that it belongs almost as much to Kinnear and Hunt as to Nicholson.  They don’t merely exist as a way for Nicholson to overcome his misanthropy.  Greg Kinnear, who is so good in 2002’s “Auto-Focus,” plays the gay neighbor not as a flaming, wacky fop but as a sensitive young man who loves his dog and loves to paint.  After he is beaten during a burglary he falls into a self-obsessed despair from which he cannot escape without the help of others.  Hunt is a loving single mother to an ailing son, but a lonely woman as well, who is waxing on that border between loneliness and desperation.  She’s fun to watch, even if she’s so self-aware, sincere, and articulate that we wonder if her character has sneaked a peek at the screenplay.  Cuba Gooding Jr. makes a relatively small appearance as Kinnear’s rambunctious agent who, helpful as he is, is conveniently never around to do all the big things he needs to talk Nicholson into doing. Nicholson, Hunt, and Kinnear are in fact all a little neurotic, and what starts out as the story of two normals having to fix a freak turns into the tale of three individuals whose neuroses compliment each other.  You make me want to be a better man, Nicholson eventually tells Hunt.  The lesson to be learned in “As Good As It Gets” is a good one, and it is that self-improvement and self-actualization do not exist in a vacuum, but in relationships with others.  Director James L. Brooks (“Terms of Endearment” and one of the founder fathers of “The Simpsons”) is a conventional but energetic director, and he may get sappy at times.  The cute puppy and the sick son may border on the manipulative, but Nicholson is always ready to say something obnoxious.  Like I said before, there aren’t a whole lot of tears. P.S.  The editing in “As Good As It Gets” is just a little bit sloppy, and if you pay really close attention you’ll notice little bobbles every-now-and-then, like when Nicholson takes his glasses off and stands up, only in the next shot he takes his glasses off AGAIN; or when Kinnear leans his head on his hand in his close-up, only to have his arms at his sides in the reverse shot.  These kinds of mistake usually don’t sink a movie unless they are in excess.  Sometimes they increase its charm with little reminders about the façade of the silver screen. Finished November 21, 2002 Copyright © 2003 Friday & Saturday Night                                                                                                          Back to home.