James L. Brooks’s romantic comedy is worth an evening for Helen Hunt and Greg Kinnear, who give Jack Nicholson’s insults consequences. It is funny and affecting, though its efforts to make Melvin lovable can feel like special pleading.
As Good as It Gets asks us to spend a long evening with a man who makes most encounters unpleasant, then to take an interest in his chances of romance. James L. Brooks makes that proposition work often enough for us to recommend it, chiefly because Helen Hunt and Greg Kinnear give the film people worth staying for. Jack Nicholson is funny, sometimes exhaustingly so, as Melvin Udall. The trouble comes when the screenplay expects our pleasure in watching him to explain why anyone would want him around.
Nicholson understands how much amusement can come from a man who regards every encounter as an unreasonable demand on his time. We laughed at Melvin’s tirades, then felt uneasy about how readily we had accepted his cruelty as part of the entertainment. The force and precision of Nicholson’s delivery account for both reactions. Brooks and co-writer Mark Andrus are less convincing when they treat a small improvement in Melvin’s behaviour as a substantial change.
Hunt, as Carol Connelly, gives those exchanges a reason to keep listening after the joke. Her waitress has enough feeling and resistance to stop the romance becoming an exercise in admiring a difficult man. We were more moved by her exasperation than by the film’s more deliberate attempts at tenderness, because she makes the effort of dealing with Melvin seem tiring. The writing does not always make her interest in him persuasive, but Hunt makes the possibility worth considering.
Kinnear’s Simon Bishop is just as important, bringing a gentleness that does not feel like a standing invitation to be mistreated. He gives the scenes with Melvin a vulnerability that Nicholson’s comic attack would otherwise crowd out. Even the business of Melvin caring for a dog works better than it ought to; an immediate responsibility gives his improving behaviour some practical basis. These relationships are more engaging when Brooks lets them remain awkward, rather than asking us to measure how much nicer his leading man has become.
John Bailey’s cinematography gives the actors room without adding much urgency, which suits the comedy better than the romantic uncertainty. Bill Brzeski’s production design is equally discreet; we seldom find the surroundings as revealing as the performances. Richard Marks’s editing makes the verbal exchanges satisfying, but across 139 minutes the accumulation of complaints becomes wearing. Hans Zimmer’s music is sometimes too eager to encourage tenderness where Hunt and Kinnear have already supplied it.
As a romantic comedy, it has the welcome confidence to make conversation the principal attraction. Brooks and Andrus write lines with enough bite to make the softer passages feel earned for a while, and they allow unpleasantness to linger beyond an easy laugh. Yet the conventional romance asks us to accept changes that the individual scenes have not quite established. Melvin’s obsessive-compulsive disorder also needs more care than a story so keen to associate becoming less difficult with becoming happier can comfortably give it.
Come for the company rather than a lesson in becoming a better person. Hunt and Kinnear deserve attention even when Nicholson has the line everyone will remember. We recommend it to anyone with a taste for romantic comedy that allows its people to be wearing. Allow for a leisurely evening, and do not expect to approve of everyone in it.
