As Good As It Gets (1997).
As Good As It Gets is a film that I never had any interest in seeing, for a few reasons. First, it always seemed like a movie that my mom would really like, a theory later proven to me when I started working at Lucky’s Video Store and continuously rented this tape almost exclusively to middle-aged women. My mind just kind of blended this, About Schmidt, and Something’s Gotta Give together over the years because they all felt the same. Second, the cast list, as talented as they may be, did nothing for me. I know it might be blasphemous to say for some, but I’ve never been a huge Jack Nicholson fan. Sure, he’s been in some amazing movies, but he’s just not a draw for me. I’ve also never loved Helen Hunt outside of Twister, and I couldn’t name any of the countless romantic comedies I know Greg Kinnear has starred in.
The film is about the intersection of the lives of three very complicated people living in New York City. Jack Nicholson plays Melvin, a racist, homophobic, generally unpleasant author with crippling OCD. Helen Hunt plays Carol, a burnt out mother who spends every second outside of her job as a waitress caring for her son who has a respiratory issue. Finally, Greg Kinnear plays Simon Bishop, a gay artist who happens to be Melvin’s neighbor. After Simon is viciously attacked in his house by Randy and Billy Loomis from Scream, a domino effect unceremoniously brings the three together.
Cutting to the chase, this is a film that I liked but didn’t love, mostly because of a story deal breaker, which I’ll get to in a second. When it was over, I had the same feeling that I get from most PT Anderson movies - I thought the actors were all really great and I thought the characters were well realized and complicated, but the story arcs never really gripped me like I hoped they would. Jack Nicholson was utterly convincing as this blatant, socially inept jerk who seemingly wrote multi-layered females in his books but if you met him, you’d wonder how. In the first scene in the film, you know everything you need to about his character, as he dumps Simon’s dog down their apartment building trash chute, dresses Simon down with gay jokes, makes racist remarks in the hall, and then gives us a sample of his OCD by locking each lock five times, using multiple soap bars during one hand wash, and other frightfully inconvenient tics. It was a quick way to get right into the character - he was easily unlikeable. Helen Hunt was also really great as this perpetually exhausted waitress at a New York diner, the only waitress willing to wait on Melvin. We realize shortly after that a problem like Melvin is small change compared to what she’s dealing with at home. When her face lights up with really small victories in her life, like her son scoring a goal in soccer, it seemed really genuine. And Greg Kinnear was really terrific as a man who nearly loses it all, the pain in his eyes during the beginning of his journey was heartbreakingly realistic.
When Simon is beat up, his partner, played by Cuba Gooding Jr., saddles a reluctant Melvin with the task of keeping an eye on his dog, Verdell, which starts to build towards a triangle of friendship. There are some nice moments along the way - Melvin becoming surprisingly attached to the dog is a standout thread, but it’s mostly a pretty safe, stakeless story. The thing that really didn’t work for me was the romantic angle between Melvin and Carol, for a few reasons. First off, Nicholson is like 25 years older than Helen Hunt, and that’s not a small age gap. I didn’t feel any real spark between them, so the angle almost seemed like she felt obligated to initiate a romantic gesture because of the kindness he showed her son. It also felt like they were just completely wrong for each other, a relationship that, when the cameras stopped rolling, I couldn’t see lasting for more than six weeks, tops. And I’m not sure if the writers were trying to tell us that the real cure for OCD is love, but that’s kind of how it felt. I think the film would have been a heck of a lot stronger if the crux of the film was watching these three people become the unlikeliest of friends, because with Simon in the mix, it could have been really easily done. His relationships with both Melvin and Carol were far more interesting than that of the romantic leads.
The film was a smash hit, becoming Jack Nicholson’s second highest grossing film of his career, behind Batman. It raked in $148 million at the box office and it was a film with legs - it was never higher than number three, opening the same week as Titanic and the awful James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, but it hung around in theaters for a long time. It also had a field day at the Oscars, garnering seven nominations with all three leads nominated and saw Nicholson and Hunt take home statues. It was even nominated for Best Picture alongside The Full Monty, LA Confidential, Good Will Hunting, and the winner, Titanic. Roger Ebert gave the film three stars, and agreed with me about the parts being greater than the sum, although he put it much more elequently. He wrote, “This film creates memorable people, but is not quite willing to follow them down unconventional paths. It's almost painful, watching the screenplay stretch and contort these characters to fit them somehow into a conventional formula--they're dragged toward the happy ending, screaming and kicking all the way. If the movie had been either more or less ambitious, it might have been more successful. Less ambitious, and it would have been a sitcom crowd-pleaser, in which a grumpy Scrooge allows his heart to melt. More ambitious, and it would have touched on the underlying irony of this lonely man's bitter life. But "As Good as It Gets" is a compromise, a film that forces a smile onto material that doesn't wear one easily.” Ebert was Ebert for a reason.
There’s a lot to like here. Like I said, the characters are really fleshed out and well acted and most of the dialogue is really well written. You’ll probably find yourself laughing at the outlandish insults Melvin spends most of his days spouting off at people. You won’t be laughing because they’re playful or actually funny, you’ll be laughing out of discomfort because they’re so abrasive and clearly meant to cut deep, but you’ll also probably assume that, even though things seem happily ever after as they walk into a bakery at four in the morning, he verbally assaulted the person making his bagel because Melvin never appears to change, he just seems to get better at giving compliments.
In addition to the VHS copies I used to rent to enthusiastic women, As Good As It Gets has been on disc a few times. The 1998 release on DVD, released the same day as the VHS tape, featured a commentary with all three main actors, the director James L. Brooks, producer Lawrence Mark, composer Hans Zimmer, and editor Richard Marks. When Twilight Time released the Blu-ray in 2012, they did not port over the commentary, included the trailer as the only extra, and limited the release to just 3000 copies. Most recently, Finally, the film has been given a 4K release, but it’s only available as part of the Columbia Classics Volume III 4K UHD box set. Thankfully, the audio commentary has returned for this release and they’ve also added deleted scenes, the original ending, behind the scenes footage, a featurette, and an electronic press kit thing.
