Jack Nicholson has one of his best and most popular roles in years as Melvin Udall, a romantic novelist who hides his obsessive-compulsive behavior by being a genuinely unpleasant person: chauvinistic, racist, intolerant.
Udall lives down the hall from Simon Bishop, played by Greg Kinnear, who won the first real critical plaudits of his career for the role. Simon is a successful young gay artist. His life is almost destroyed, however, when he is robbed and brutally beaten.
The other side of the triangle is waitress Carol Connelly, played by Helen Hunt who is gradually building a strong film career. Carol comes into frequent contact with Udall, as she is the only waitress at the restaurant he frequents who tolerates his behavior. Carol is a single mother whose son is very ill. It is the boy's illness which triggers much of the plot.
I saw both this film and Wag the Dog on the same day. Their similarities are interesting to note: both are comedies by veteran Oscar-winning directors, both have impressive ensemble casts headed up by a two-time Oscar winning actor. Both have screenplays filled with brilliant dialogue and situations which, unfortunately, lose focus in the final act. The loss of focus in As Good as it Gets, involves a road trip (usually a convention of more juvenile films) which doesn't really seem to go anywhere.
The film begins with Melvin being forced to be nice to neighbor Simon after having been threatened by Simon's flamboyant art dealer (Cuba Gooding Jr). After the young artist has been beaten so severely that he must be hospitalized, Melvin has to take care of Simon's butt-ugly little dog. Inexplicably, this misanthrope grows a fondness for the creature and builds a sort of grudging friendship for Simon, as well.
When Carol's son's sickness worsens, she quits her job in order to care for the boy full-time. This is a disaster for the routine-obsessed Melvin who refuses to do so much as to walk on sidewalk cracks. To get her back to the restaurant so she can wait on him, he pays for a doctor for the boy. Neither Carol nor Melvin quite know how to react to this new state of affairs, so she goes to his apartment in the middle of the night to berate him for changing the status quo of their acquaintanceship.
Eventually, the three go on the road trip to Baltimore, ostensibly for Simon to ask his estranged parents for money. While there, Simon is able to break out of his long depression, while matters between Carol and Melvin come to a head. It isn't until the return to New York that those two can come to an understanding.
My main problem with the end of the film is the Carol-Melvin relationship. To turn it into a possible romantic entanglement seems to go against the rest of the film. Is it possible for Carol and Melvin to share a strongly affectionate relationship? Certainly. However, considering both Melvin's neuroses and the age difference between him and Carol, romance seems most unlikely.
Jack Nicholson gets a dream role in Melvin: a man who hides his mental illness behind a wall of offensiveness, but still tries his hardest and most sincere to fix what is wrong with his psyche. Only Nicholson could make a larger-than-life figure simultaneously so pathetic. Greg Kinnear is mopey and morose as Simon: perhaps he (unkind joke ahead) prepared for the role by reading reviews for Dear God and A Smile Like Yours. Kinnear at least deserves kudos for portraying the least swishy gay artist in recent mainstream film.
Helen Hunt may be miscast as Carol: perhaps someone older or more worn down, like Jessica Lange, Debra Winger, or Brooks's original choice, Holly Hunter, have would better served the role, though Hunt does acquit herself honorably. Of the large supporting cast, standouts are Gooding, Shirley Knight as Carol's long-suffering mother, and Yeardley Smith (better known as the voice of Lisa Simpson) who is very funny in her two scenes as Simon's sympathetic assistant. In a wink to Monty Python fans, the film also include's Eric Idle's classic "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," sung first by Nicholson and late by Art Garfunkel and an angelic choir.
Brooks is second to none in his ability to create realistic dialogue and vivid characters. With the exception of the too-Hollywood I'll Do Anything, his movies provide the career highlights for nearly all of his principals and supporting actors. Perhaps they do get a bit frothy, but Brooks's films, As Good as it Gets included, allow viewers to enjoy sentimentality without guilt or manipulation. That these films are not flukes is attested to by the continued popularity of his television shows.
Three-and-a-half stars
Copyright 1998 by Dale G. Abersold
