As Good as It Gets

 Year:  1998

Director:  James L. Brooks

Screenplay:  Mark Andrus and James L. Brooks

Starring:  Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear, Cuba Gooding Jr., Skeet Ulrich, Shirley Knight

Running Time:  139 minutes

Genre:  Romantic comedy, drama

New York City:  Best-selling romance novelist Melvin Udall (Nicholson) is bigoted, misanthropic and suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder.  Every day he eats lunch at the same Manhattan restaurant where he insists on sitting at the table and being served by the same server, Carole Connelly (Hunt), the only one who can tolerate his obnoxious behaviour.  Carole herself is struggling to make ends meet while caring for her ill son.  When Melvin's neighbour, gay artist Simon (Kinnear) is beaten and robbed in his apartment, Melvin is pressured into caring for his pet dog while Simon is in hospital, despite the fact that Melvin frequently bullies Simon and hates the dog.  However, Melvin and the dog end up bonding, and, in spite of himself, he finds himself increasingly drawn into the lives of the people around him.

This is an enjoyable, romantic comedy-drama, in the Woody Allen mould, which doesn't really break much new ground.  Jack Nicholson is ideal as the grouchy, offensive Melvin.  Helen Hunt, who at the time was probably best known for the sitcom Mad About You (1994-1999), won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Carole, and she has real spark as the troubled, but loving Carole who is able to find some kind of humanity in Melvin.  Greg Kinnear is good as the sensitive artist, Simon, who becomes something of a tragic character as his life collapses following his attack.  The film is often uneven in tone, being really quite dark in places, which sometimes sits uneasily with the more broadly comic scenes, and sentiment.  It's also too long, with a running time of two hours and twenty minutes, and the conclusion seems very unlikely.  However, the characters are engaging, and there are some great performances and it's often very funny.  There is nothing new here, but it is an engaging and ultimately warm film, although you kind of wonder how happy the characters will be in the long term.  Also, Melvin is so obnoxious and offensive for most of the film it may be hard for some viewers to warm to him at all, even if he's ultimately shown to be warm hearted softy.  

Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets