There were certain movies my ex-wife watched rather frequently. Her taste wasn’t bad, but she didn’t necessarily go out looking for these movies. If she found one as she was flipping channels, she left it on. What that meant is I got to see these movies rather frequently, but rarely from start to finish. Instead, I’d see certain scenes over and over again, and that in many cases, I’ve had little desire to see the bits that came in-between. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the airplane scene in Almost Famous. And that one I’ve finished.
As Good as It Gets was one of those movies. I never really wanted to finish it before.
However, I recently purchases a poster from the Pop Chart Lab, the Fill-In Filmography. 1,500 “must see” movies. Now, I’ve seen a lot of movies, but after filling in the bubbles for the movies I’ve seen, I was a little surprised to see I’d only seen about 600 of them. As such, I’m looking to fill in the rest.
That leads me to As Good as It Gets before the movie disappears from Netflix by the end of the month.
Truth be told, this movie didn’t really grab me. Now, to be fair, the rom-com isn’t one of my favorite genres. And being very familiar with some scenes and not others certainly didn’t help. But I seriously wasn’t sure how well this movie has aged.
Now, I’m all about fairness, so let’s point out what I did like. Jack Nicholson is showing off his usual devil-may-care charisma. Helen Hunt and Greg Kinnear, both of whom were probably better known for their TV work at the time, are also both fine in their respective role. I’ll even give Kinnear some extra points for not playing his gay character as a gay stereotype. Plus, the movie has a cute dog. I like dogs.
I’ll even give some credit to writer/director James L. Brooks. The guy has had a long career in TV and movies, and he shows a steady hand here. I mean, this guy produced one of my all-time favorite shows in the form of The Simpsons.
And that may be why As Good as It Gets doesn’t work as well for me. It feels very much like a TV sitcom. I suspect the presence of both Hunt and Kinnear don’t help there, but the movie feels very small, and not in a good way.
So, we have misanthropic writer Melvin Udall (Nicholson), a guy with bad OCD that seems to do nothing more than drive people away. He makes new friends with gay neighbor Simon (Kinnear) and single mom waitress Carol (Hunt). In the case of Simon, that means Melvin has to stop being homophobic. In the case of Carol, it means eventual romance.
OK, so, let’s see what this movie is saying: Melvin can be a better man if he and Carol become a couple. She’s half his age, and, quite frankly, he has a knack for saying hurtful things on a routine basis. When she’s not hurt or frustrated, she spends a lot of her time taking her asthmatic son to useless doctors. So, a good woman can fix a broken man? I mean, he even gets over his OCD by the end of the movie. I don’t think that’s how those sorts of things work, even if he legitimately wants to be a better person because of her.
Then again, he starts to become a better man when circumstances force him to care for Simon’s dog Verdell. So, while I don’t want to say a good woman can fix a bad man, maybe a good dog can.
OK, not really, but Melvin’s issues were more he had a knack for saying the worst possible thing at all times. Verdell doesn’t really notice that. If Melvin can care for a dog, maybe he can care for a person. And considering Verdell is the one character in the movie Melvin tries to maybe hurt when he drops the small dog down a garbage chute, that may be saying something.
Then again, Simon seemed to be letting his dog urinate in the hallway. Melvin might have been the better dog owner after all.
At any rate, the movie was fine, but not really something I could get into. It really did seem like something that would have worked better as a TV series given Brooks’ resume. Not a bad movie, but not something I would seek out again any time soon.
Grade: B-
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