Here’s a bit about this week’s episode of Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics. We choose the films almost at random: one of us will watch (or rewatch) something and text the other guy. We then record without any previous conversation, recreating the enthusiastic conversations people have in the car on the way home from the theater. We also take requests, so leave a comment below if there’s a film you’d like us to cover. We’ve done over 250 and you can find them all here.
I avoided this movie for years, fearing it was like a Hallmark production or Very Special Episode, despite the presence of Jack Nicholson. It smelled like the kind of movie in which people come together under stress and learn that, gosh, we’re all just part of this big lovely mess called humanity. The dog’s reaction shots also looked irritating. But rewatching Broadcast News for a recent episode convinced me to give it a watch.
Again, I was late to the party.
Any creative writing teacher will tell students that characters need problems they need to overcome and that these problems must be externalized: Hamlet has to kill the king, Frankenstein has to kill his creature, and Sheriff Brody has to kill the shark. Robert McKee’s oft-repeated line that conflict is to story what sound is to music reminds us that without a problem, a character (or person) seems less alive. (This is more true on the screen than in the audience, where we do not often view our problems as interesting plot devices that will reveal our characters.)
Each of the three leading characters in As Good As it Gets has something that prevents them from fully entering the world of the living. Carol (Helen Hunt) cares for a son who needs constant medical care; Simon (Greg Kinnear) is almost killed in his own apartment; Melvin (Jack Nicholson) has OCD and dislikes other people as much as they dislike him. In other hands, each of these problems would be somehow overcome and resolved in the last ten minutes. This isn’t a knock; there are many great movies in which this occurs: High Noon, The Miracle Worker, The King’s Speech, Hoosiers–it’s a formula we expect and enjoy. But what happens when a problem is solved and the solution suddenly creates new problems? That’s what makes As Good as It Gets as good as it is. Carol’s son is breathing well and playing soccer; Simon heals from the assault; Melvin gets his hands dirty and forgets to lock his door. All three of them are pulled into life and must live there, without retreating to the safety of their past trials. Melvin used to lock his door five times, but now his door has been pried open.
This is why the title is so appropriate. Brooks’s original (and terrible) title was Old Friends, but composer Hans Zimmer suggested he change it. If any of the three leads were asked the question posed by Melvin, “What if this is as good as it gets?”, they’d respond with something like, “Probably—but I hope my son will get better and I have my mom to help and my waitressing job,” “Sure—I have a new agent who is planning shows of my paintings and people seem interested,” or, “Definitely—I work alone in my apartment, I don’t have a boss, and I’ve made a boatload of money cranking out these novels like some cross between Danielle Steele and James Patterson.”
But if they were asked this again at the end of the film, after they have each suffered some kind of threat and shock to their systems, all three would revise their answers. Their end points—a reunion with estranged parents, a romance, letting down one’s guard to be genuinely interested in other people—are as good as it gets for all them. Melvin assumed that other people had lives surrounded by friends and eating noodle salad, but he learns that warm rolls aren’t so bad.
There are still too many dog-reaction shots, but the film surfs just above the sharks of sentimentality that threaten it at every plot point: we never see Melvin admiring one of Simon’s paintings or Simon reading one of Melvin’s books. It does end with a touch of the sentimentality it largely avoids, but as Richard III says, “I am not made of stone.” It’s still miles away from Old Friends.