Date: Fri 30-Jan-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: DONNAM

Quick Words:

Playing-Nicholson-Hunt-Kinnear

Full Text:

(rev "As Good As It Gets" for Now Playing)

Now Playing--

Nicholson Is `Good' But He's Been Better

By Trey Paul Alexander III

Since Quentin Tarantino, the former video store clerk whose pores ooze the

peculiarities of pop culture, came on the scene with his distinctive brand of

storytelling, a new breed of Hollywood hipness was ushered into being. Though

not flooded with people who talk to the screen or pause in mid-action (like

Dave and Maddie of the gone and nearly forgotten, idiosyncratic television

series "Moonlighting"), it does boast a high quota of self-aware characters

who are very cognizant of the culture in which they live (ie, TV shows and

movies such as "Friends," "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer," the Scream flicks, the

aforementioned Tarantino ouvre, and others).

Though this often makes for witty banter and fun viewing, the fallout from

this "wink-wink" style is the audience's eroding ability to become completely

immersed into a movie. Instead of seeing a particular role, we focus on the

individual(s) playing the role: "Ooo, this is the one where Michael Jordan

plays Batman?" or, "Which washed-up, former star will have their career

resurrected by Tarantino this time?" Even Wag the Dog , a cunningly funny (and

becoming frighteningly more truthful by the day) political media satire, has

elements of "Oh wow, look, it's Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro!" in it.

As Good As It Gets , a multi-Golden Globe winner and currently playing in

Danbury, is susceptible to this self-referential syndrome. It stars Jack

Nicholson (American Film Icon), Helen Hunt ("Mad About You" TV star), and Greg

Kinnear (wise-acre TV star with burgeoning film career), and initially seems

only about the joy of casting three very different talents and playing them

off one another, rather than putting any semblance of a coherent film

together.

So when Carol (Hunt), a frustrated waitress living with her mother and caring

for an asthmatic son, confronts Melvin (Nicholson), a misanthropic writer

struggling with an obsessive-compulsive streak, with, "Do you have any control

over how creepy you allow yourself to get?," you half expect Jack to raise the

trademark eyebrows, flash a Machiavellian grin in the affirmative and reply,

"Heeere's Johnny!"

However, one of the accomplishments of As Good As It Gets , which is not quite

a comedy and not wholly romantic, is the portrayals by Nicholson, Hunt and

Kinnear (as Melvin's gay neighbor, Simon), who surmount their own individual

personalities enough to create coherent (albeit wounded and flawed),

three-dimensional characters that propel this often very odd movie. In fact,

you might at times ask yourself where this is going, but many of its fine,

smaller moments add up and create a mounting curiosity within the viewer to

find out what will happen to these characters, particularly once the plot

concocts a way to get the three together for a road trip from New York to

Baltimore.

As Good As It Gets is not flawless, and suffers from a tendency to stray with

some strange, meandering sequences, but its tenacity to follow these

characters through all their various eccentricities makes for a fairly

rewarding payoff. Patience from the audience is undoubtedly necessary during

the course of this film, particularly in the early going, as it is somewhat

difficult to ascertain who these individuals are: the commercials and trailers

are a bit deceiving in that they do not prepare you for the film's offbeat

sensibility, which gives us a protagonist, in Melvin, who at times might make

even Archie Bunker blush with his insensitive rants, and surrounds him with

characters that have their own little quirks as well.

As Good As It Gets is rated PG-13 for profanity, violence (a brutal beating

puts Simon in the hospital), and sexual suggestiveness (like Titanic , this

film finds a way to unnecessarily get the lead actress in various states of

undress before an artist who is -- big surprise! -- inspired by her form).