As Good As It Gets
Romantic comedies often fail for a number of various reasons. For one, you have the two leads who are both designed to be pretty and perfect yet come across as being inherently unlikable simply because so much of their lives and personalities come off as being so movie star fake. Secondly, the so called “jokes” which are supposed to make up the “comedy” portion of the genre are usually dead on arrival when it comes to inspiring laughter. And thirdly and most importantly of all, the overall story is entirely dependent on the one basic question of “will they or won’t they?” (with the answer being fairly obvious if you just simply look at the poster) with no room for any greater story points or themes that can help it to rise above the pack. It would just happen that James L. Brooks, a writer / director with a penchant for merely okay human dramas and a deep background in mostly classic television, had correctly ascertained these problems with this particular subgenre when he set out to make this 1997 release and thus sought to rise above them, making this movie in a very unusual style that wound up working beautifully. For each major scene here, Brooks would give a basic layout to the actors about the point of it as it related to the overall story structure along with a handful of choice lines of dialogue, and then over the course of many, many takes, just sit back and allow the actors to work things out themselves and just give everything an extremely natural, realistic vibe that always managed to ring true, all while knowing that he could eventually bring it all together in the editing room. In addition, while we do have our standard male and female leads here, Brooks manages to expand the narrative by actually making the whole thing into a literal triangle of friendship, adding a nonthreatening third party into the mix (that being a gay man), and building off of that in order to show how all three of these components manage to grow as human beings in and of themselves, resulting in a final product that was so good that it made for a big hit at The Oscars and all along the awards show circuit and also succeeded in being a massive box office smash. In the lead role, Brooks daringly chose Jack Nicholson, so definitively established as a bona fide Hollywood legend in residence by this point that it seemed to many that he could never work at playing a more average guy, but given the nature of his character’s obsessive compulsive disorder and the fact that he’s also a particularly abrasive asshole, perhaps it’s only fitting that Nicholson was cast since only he could bring the proper amount of verve to the part that would compel the viewer to keep watching the film when even a less charismatic actor would no doubt have caused the movie to be shut off. Nicholson’s Melvin Udall is portrayed as being someone who is openly racist, sexist, homophobic, and even a bit anti-Semitic (though in an admittedly hilarious scene), and is so cynical in his own way because he actually makes a very good living writing gushy romantic novels that he’s smart enough to be able to have them come off as being rather genuine when actually the truth is he knows that every single word that he writes is just utter bullshit for the mindless masses to devour voraciously. Such is Melvin’s OCD being so severe as it is that besides being a devout germophobe, he prefers to follow the exact same routine every single day, including eating at the same restaurant at the same time while eating at the same table and being waited on by the same waitress for every day of his life, with any disruption in this particular routine resulting in a total meltdown on his part. The fact that Nicholson managed to win yet another Oscar for this role was as of the result of the concept that we get to witness this strangely likable total prick be forced to grow as a human being and learn to care for others as well as eventually displaying amazing acts of kindness based partly to maintain his own sanity and partly to discover his own humanity, which all starts when he is railroaded into looking after a hospitalized neighbor’s little dog and even surprises himself from the way that he bonds with it. The catalyst for many of these events is from none other than his favorite waitress played by Helen Hunt, perfectly cast here because of her rather average looks (unlike many of the glamour roles she has had that she was all wrong for precisely for that same reason) and thus nailing down her own Oscar win for Best Actress for playing the one person whom, because she waits on his table every day, has come to know him, understand him, and actually is able to TOLERATE him (no mean feat, since the rest of the waitstaff clearly hates him). More importantly, she retains the ability to actually have somewhat of a measure of control over him, having the ability to calm him down or even put him in his place if he happens to piss her off with little to no fear of reprisal. The twist is that even though Nicholson secretly adores her to the point of thinking of her as being near feminine perfection, Hunt is actually very flawed in her own right, maintaining a personal life that can be best described as desperate and always fawning over an extremely sick young son whom she (perhaps unnecessarily) rushes to the emergency room literally every time that he sneezes, and it is only when the little boy’s health problems causes her to miss time from work (and disrupt Nicholson’s routine) that he freaks out enough to hire a top medical specialist in his field (the late and much missed Harold Ramis) to literally take care of the boy with a level of healthcare quality that most poor folks can’t really afford, with the kicker being that Nicholson does this not for sex or even a date with Hunt, but to see to it that she’s back to work waiting on his table and not having to worry about her son’s health anymore, with Hunt doing a wonderful job of bringing the sassy, smart, yet realistic and unglamorous working class woman into full bloom here, something that she deserves her props for whether you’re a fan of hers or not. And that brings us to the third and perhaps most important component of the threesome in Greg Kinnear in the Supporting Actor Oscar nominated role of Nicholson’s gay artist neighbor who starts off being shown as having a very antagonistic, combative relationship with Nicholson, but after he has a major run of bad luck when he foolishly allows a pretty boy street hustler (Skeet Ulrich) into his home to “pose” for him, only to be set up, robbed, and beaten severely by both the kid and a couple of his dirtbag friends, landing him in the hospital with no health insurance that drains his finances dry and (after being blown off for help by all his “real” friends) winds up turning for help to his ultra asshole neighbor who had always delighted in raining a slew of gay jokes upon his head (with Nicholson being partially persuaded by Kinnear’s gay art dealer friend played by Cuba Gooding Jr.), with the end result being that they (along with Hunt acting as a “chaperone”) all head out on a road trip down to Baltimore so that Kinnear can attempt to reconcile with his estranged parents (and also ask them for money). Kinnear should be commended for bravely bucking the usually very offensive gay movie stereotype and playing his Simon Bishop on his own terms as just a sad, down on his luck yet good hearted, good natured guy who just happens to be gay (and ironically probably doing more to raise the awareness of homosexuals as being likable human beings than any 50 episodes of Will And Grace could ever do), and his eventual “rebirth” as an artist after spending some quality quiet time with Hunt manages to have all of the payoff that it was intended to, which leads to Nicholson wanting to prove so badly to both himself and to Hunt that he really can be a better man that he has Kinnear move in with him and takes care of him against the ways of his former nature to the point of them becoming near best friends. And despite a near too long in the tooth running time and a possible overdose on character development, what makes everything work here is the feeling that all of these characters that we see actually feel like REAL people (even Nicholson) and the ending itself, with the feeling that MAYBE they will get together and that it MIGHT all just work out between them without the easy to predict conclusions of your typical assembly line romcoms, makes the film have the same kind of feel as the hard to figure out, nobody really knows the answers types of real life romances, many of which will actually start and stop just like the people that we get to know here…
9/10