REVIEW: As Good as It Gets

I wrote this review because, unexplainably, some people are under the impression that 'As Good as It Gets' is a good movie, or even 'has anything redeemable to offer at all'. I mean 85% Fresh? Several Best Actors and a Golden Globe for best picture!? Have I gone mad?

An "obsessive-compulsive, misanthropic, and bigoted romantic novelist named Melvin Udall"?
Imagine House and Monk in one movie - How can you lose? How can you screw that up? That is almost a perfect movie right there! Perhaps if it was written even slightly convincingly, or even exaggeratedly comical I would have liked this movie. What it ends up as, is a watery, insultingly underdeveloped, mockery of intelligent cinema that only managed to stave off boredom as I watched it by inciting intense waves of hatred. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I wouldn't want to bias the audience.

The movie is essentially about three characters: THE CRANKY SOCIOPATH, THE SINGLE MOTHER and THE HOMOSEXUAL.

Now some people might find it offensive that I defined the entire character of THE HOMOSEXUAL by his gender preference, but it is not my doing. The character has nothing else. In fact the entire depth of these characters seem to delve to no more than what might have been scrawled on a napkin as Mark Andrus, the writer, lazily attempted to scratch a living as a HACK.

The amazingly awful thing about this movie is that, though these three characters can be summed up in a two-dimensional stereotype, it seems to be written by someone who has had no experience with any people remotely like them - as they each act out what isn't even a well fleshed out stereotype. Characters continually announce what cliches they're are supposed to be playing, as though the writer thought we needed to be reminded because of lazy acting. This is one of the few times I whole heartedly agree with him.

THE CRANKY OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE, lazily portrayed by a staggeringly elderly Jack Nicholson, has this unique character arc where he becomes progressively more annoying and unbelievable throughout the movie until you hate him and fervently disbelieve that THE SINGLE MOTHER somehow has changed her attitude and loves him now... for some reason.

In fact, the only way there could have been less chemistry would have been if the entire movie was set in a physics lab.

If you took this movie as an accurate description of what obsessive-compulsive people are like, then you might believe that they are irrational people who have a smattering of typical and uninteresting rules which they rigidly enforce on themselves to great 'comedic effect' once or twice - and then easily ignore them for the rest of the movie. You'd further believe that instead of talking, they simply spew out mediocre one liners which are only soughta' insulting. On the plus side, their inability to interact with other people only happens when convenient.

This movie might have escaped my scorn if they could have made THE CRANKY SOCIOPATH either actually funny/harsh, or if they could have made him even a little relatable/likeable/redeemable - as a character who is actually struggling with a real problem. As it is, he floats in this limbo state of 'me not caring at all'. The fact that people gave his character so many awards, only tells me how desparate people are for interesting characters like this. You can do a hell of a lot better than this, people!

The movie continues to head up poorly defined paths only to go nowhere or pretend that it never happened. There are three or four major sub-plots that never go anywhere, the main character's dying kid, or the black guy that we never really understood who he was - or even the street kid who they spent so much time and energy building up an emotional connection and back story who disappeared half-way through the movie and never came back. It's easily twice as bad as the sub-plots from the Transformer movie.

In fact at least half of the movie is spent around what is happening to THE HOMOSEXUAL - all about his money issues, physical injuries, crashing artistic career, his friends leaving him, the long road trip to visit his parents with whom he has unresolved tensions with, or his blossoming heterosexual feelings for THE SINGLE MOTHER which is only slightly more convincing than the Nicholson/Hunt relationship - and NONE of these are resolved whatsoever. WHATSOEVER!
(The road trip to visit his parents ends with him saying that he for some reason doesn't need to see them any more and they drive back - I'm serious... we don't even see them)

However, I guess there were two good things I could say about this movie. It had heart, and a good dose of twists.

Well... when I say heart, I mean an overly melodramatic piano played loudly over THE CRANKY GUY crying over a cute dog in what was supposed to be a magical character changing moment. This happened like ten minutes into the film, waaay before we knew that it was supposed to be out of character for him.

Also gross and baffling Jack Nicholson make-outs? Am I right?

Aaand when I say twists, I mean characters saying things for no reason just so the writers can jack up the tension a little and not resolve it. And other characters reacting to things with no rational base, and other characters doing unexplainable things and then completely disappearing out of the movie. Or even an amazingly unsubtle case of THE CRANKY GUY saying "as good as it gets" in a pointless scene just so they could have a title for the film. (I hate that)

In conclusion:
The movie was kind of like a kid with learning difficulties getting up on stage, ad-libbing a story about something he knows nothing about, and everyone cheering and giving him money.

Actually, please tell me the guys who made this have some kind of intellectual disability - not only would that make sense, but it would explain why they got so many awards.

Even so... it's still pretty bad.