AS GOOD AS IT GETS James L. Brooks, 1997 Our rating: 2 Personality Crisis: Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson A romantic comedy impaired by generally uninspired jokes and a highly unlikely romance between mismatched leads, AS GOOD AS IT GETS is the story of a middle-aged misanthrope who reluctantly falls in love. Popular with both audiences and critics, the film was described in its ad campaign as "a comedy from the heart that goes for the throat." Melvin (Jack Nicholson) is a superstitious, "poly-phobic" bigot who writes romance novels for a living. Every morning, he goes to a neighborhood cafe where his breakfast is served by Carol (Helen Hunt), an unmarried waitress with a sickly son (Jesse James). When his neighbor, Simon (Greg Kinnear), a young homosexual artist, is severely beaten by burglars and taken to the hospital, Melvin is saddled with the care of Simon's dog, which he soon becomes fond of. Several weeks later, Simon comes home, depressed, broke, and blocked. When he learns that Carol has quit her job to care for her little boy, Melvin pays for the child's medical care, ostensibly to get the mother back in the cafe waiting on him. Carol tells Melvin that she has no intention of ever sleeping with him, then apologizes for jumping to conclusions and returns to work. Drafted to drive Simon to Baltimore, where the young man intends to ask his parents for money, Melvin recruits Carol to accompany them. In Baltimore, Melvin and Carol go out on a dinner date, an event that is ruined by Melvin's blunt sarcasm--despite his oblique confession that his attraction to Carol has motivated him to begin taking pills for impotence. That night in their motel, the sight of Carol in the nude inspires Simon to start drawing again, and the next day, his depression lifted, he decides not to ask his parents for funding but to try to go it alone. Back in Manhattan, Melvin donates one of his rooms to the now homeless artist. Melvin calls Carol in Brooklyn and the two go for a walk. Carol's resistance to Melvin's clumsy courtship technique weakens when he calls her the greatest woman alive. As the couple kiss, their official romance finally begins. In AS GOOD AS IT GETS, it becomes clear that Helen Hunt has matured into a beautiful woman--her appearance in the near nude, lovingly lit in amber, is almost breathtaking. The only thing that keeps her from becoming a major actress is a shortage of bite to complement the warmth and decency she conveys so well. Nicholson does as much as any actor could with a character who, in the real world, simply does not occur on the social level depicted here. Such bigots do indeed exist; the woods are full of them, but the brownstones of Greenwich Village are not. Melvin's real-life counterpart would hate Republicans, tourists, and philistines like his readers--not blacks, Jews, and homosexuals. Kinnear does the most he can--quite a lot--with his third-wheel character (one who probably belongs in a different movie), and at one point contributes a brief but funny imitation of Melvin/Nicholson. In the final analysis, the film has several narrative problems, but the central one revolves around the fact that there is so little connective tissue between Melvin and Carol that unbriefed viewers of AS GOOD AS IT GETS may find themselves startled, if not downright baffled, by the improbable romance that ultimately develops between them. Unhappily, it appears that Freud's ghost continues to haunt Hollywood, a place where the words "get over it" are seldom heard. An attempt is made to mitigate Melvin's obnoxious behavior by revealing him to be a former psychiatric patient: he can't help being a prick, you see; Carol is given a long and inappropriately heavy scene in which she bemoans the lack of a man in her life; and when Simon, on the road to Baltimore, begins recounting the traumas of his blighted childhood, Carol actually pulls over in order to give him her full attention. Inescapable conclusion: what '90s romantic comedy needs is a little less "unloading" and a little more Lubitsch. (Violence, nudity, sexual situations, profanity.) Tell us what you think! Academy Award Nomination: Best Picture Academy Award Nomination: Best Actor - Jack Nicholson Academy Award Nomination: Best Actress - Helen Hunt Academy Award Nomination: Best Supporting Actor - Greg Kinnear Academy Award Nomination: Best Original Screenplay - Mark Andrus, James L. Brooks Academy Award Nomination: Best Original Musical or Comedy Score - Hans Zimmer Academy Award Nomination: Best Film Editing Country of origin: U.S. Genre: Romance; Comedy; Drama Color or b/w: Color Production Co(s).: Gracie Films Released by: Columbia TriStar MPAA rating: PG-13 Parental rating: Objectionable for children Running time: 138