Amazon.com video review:
For all of its conventional plotting about an
obsessive-compulsive curmudgeon (Jack Nicholson) who improves his
personality at the urging of his gay neighbor (Greg Kinnear) and a
waitress (Helen Hunt) who inspires his best behavior, this is one of
the sharpest Hollywood comedies of the 1990s. Nicholson could play his
role in his sleep (the Oscar he won should have gone to Robert Duvall
for The Apostle), but his mischievous persona is precisely
necessary to give heart to his seemingly heartless character, who is
of all things a successful romance novelist. As a single mom with a
chronically asthmatic young son, Hunt gives the film its conscience
and integrity (along with plenty of wry humor), and she also won an
Oscar for her wonderful performance. Greg Kinnear had to settle for an
Oscar nomination (while cowriter-director James L. Brooks was
inexplicably snubbed by Oscar that year), but his work was also
singled out in the film's near-unanimous chorus of critical
praise. It's questionable whether a romance between Hunt and the much
older Nicholson is entirely believable, but this movie's smart
enough--and charmingly funny enough--to make it seem endearingly
possible. --Jeff Shannon
