As Good As It Gets (1997)

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Directed by: James L. Brooks

Cast: Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear

Running time: 139 minutes

Melvin Udall is a misanthropic novelist living alone in a New York apartment. His OCD locks him up in a series of habits that have a severe control over his existence. Every day, he eats breakfast at a nearby restaurant, where he uses his own plastic utensils due to his fear of germs. He terrorizes staff and customers alike, but he develops a certain attachment to one waitress who works there, Carol Connelly, a single mother raising her very sick kid. When Melvin is forced to babysit his neighbor Simon Bishop’s dog, after Bishop is savagely beaten up during a robbery in his apartment, the misanthropic man’s life is turned upside down and he is forced to reconsider his way of dealing with people and with his life.

As Good As It Gets goes into overdrive when it comes to sentimentality, but the performances by Nicholson and Hunt are so convincingly solid that it makes up for it. Jack is especially in top form here. When the veteran actor is given good lines, he delivers them in memorable fashion.

This is a film I like very much. Lots of laughter and some moments of tenderness.

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