“As Good As It Gets” is a rarity among today’s movies, a truly witty and poignant romantic comedy with an unusual protagonist. That protagonist is Melvin, played with relish by Jack Nicholson. Melvin is a highly successful novelist who is also an abrasive misanthrope suffering from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. (Not your typical hero for sure!)
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As one would expect, Melvin is a recluse and resistant to any changes in his life until he is forced to interact with a down-on-his-luck gay neighbor, Simon, portrayed by Greg Kinnear, and Simon’s perky little pet pooch, Verdell. Melvin also becomes reluctantly involved with the pretty and patient waitress Carol, played by Helen Hunt, who serves him breakfast every day at a local cafe. Other than Carol, none of the other cafe’s employees will deal with the impossible Melvin.
When Carol abruptly quits her job, Melvin tracks her down and offers her financial incentives to return to her post. Melvin increasingly finds himself drawn into Carol’s personal life, and he eventually falls for the plucky single mom.
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“As Good As It Gets” is a quirky update of the fable “Beauty and the Beast”. Gifted writer-director James L. Brooks has assembled a superb cast to re-tell this classic tale. Besides the pitch perfect lead performances by Nicholson, Hunt, and Kinnear, there are sparkling supporting performances by Cuba Gooding Jr., Shirley Knight and others.
Too many of today’s so-called comedies are mindless, uninspired concoctions profuse with sophomoric vulgarities and sexual obscenities. “As Good As It Gets” reminds us that there are still a few determined filmmakers willing to bring qualities such as intelligence, inventiveness, sophistication, and charm back to the silver screen. It is a shame that there are not more artists like these to inspire and entertain much-deprived audiences.
Another reviewer comments that the events in this film conspire to make Jack Nicholson (or rather Melvyn Udall) a human being. On the contrary, this is a film where the central character, an obsessive-compulsive bigot, is human from the start: We just don’t realize it. A key moment in the film is when Simon, Melvin’s gay neighbour (Greg Kinnear), is telling the young male prostitute, Vincent (Skeet Ulrich), about his art, and comments that he likes to watch people because sometimes, when you look at someone long enough, “you see their humanity.” At that point Vincent is momentarily enabled to see something beyond the seedy world of male prostitution; at the same time Simon gives us the interpretive key to the whole movie. It is a film about three very different people who discover their common humanity.
Melvin is a hateful and insensitive recluse with a debilitating mental disorder; Carol (Helen Hunt), a Manhattan waitress struggling with her son’s chronic illness and finding her identity swallowed up in the process; Simon, a gay artist who loses everything when he is attacked and robbed in his own home. One by one they must learn to see the humanity in each other and, as importantly, in themselves (”Where’d I go?” asks Simon as he looks at the reflection of his battered face in the mirror). We, too, must learn to see the human being underneath the spiteful and vicious (if somewhat the “loveable rogue”) in Melvin.
The theme is developed sensitively and beautifully throughout the course of the film (perhaps only slightly overlong at more than two hours), with help coming from a fourth character, Verdelle, a dog, whose pivotal role in the narrative is easily overlooked (standing in the same cinematic tradition as Toto of “The Wizard of Oz”). By the end of the film, we are aware that the big issues in the character’s lives are still to be totally overcome, but the process of resolution has begun as it should, with the characters each recognizing the dignity and worth of the others (and themselves).
James L. Brook’s delicate direction carefully avoids excessive sentimentalism and saccharine sweetness (though admittedly, it teeters perilously close to the edge at times), and results in one of the most charming and profound comedies of recent years.
