The movie "As Good as It Gets" was lauded as an excellent film, featuring an amazing performance by Jack Nicholson. Helen Hunt won best supporting actress.
A quick summary: Melvin Udall is a writer and an obsessive-compulsive. He's... well, obsessive, freakish, rude, obnoxious, and difficult. He's nasty as hell to his next-door neighbour Simon Bishop (Greg Kinnear), a gay artist, and to Simon's boyfriend. The only person who can handle him is Carol Connelly (Helen Hunt), a waitress in the only restaurant at which Melvin will eat. When Carol takes a day off to tend to her chronically sick son, Melvin sends a high-priced doctor to the boy so that she'll be back to serve him for lunch the next day. Bit by bit, Melvin, Simon, and Carol come together. In the end, Carol cure's Simon's "painter's block," and she accepts Melvin as a "boyfriend."
Well, what bugged me about this movie? I saw it as a feminist fairy tale: a condemnation of men as foul-mouthed, callous boors and a homage to women as selfless, hard-working, and intelligent.
With the exception of the gay artist Simon and his boyfriend, the male characters in this film have nothing to recommend them. At the beginning of the film Carol brings home a date. He lifts her in his arms as soon as they get in the door and carries her straight to the couch where he starts undressing her. When they're interrupted by Helen's mother and son who are trying to be quiet in the next room, he up and leaves, saying, "Too much reality for me." He's not only "only out for one thing," he's a selfish snob as well. Simon the artist has an agent who is also a prick: when Simon orders him to find a model he picks up a male prostitute instead. In a few short lines the film makes sure we know that the agent has seen these prostitutes before; he's a regular customer. The male prostitute and his friends end up ransacking Simon's place and beating Simon up badly, so they're hardly shining examples of masculinity.
Then there is Melvin himself. Melvin is a freak. He latches and unlatches the door five times every time he enters his apartment; he washes his hands every time he comes in, using a fresh bar of soap. He walks down the sidewalk avoiding all of the cracks. He always eats at the same restaurant, sits in the same seat, and must eat with plastic cutlery. All of this wouldn't be so bad if every word out of his mouth wasn't a grievous insult to someone else. Melvin isn't especially responsible for who he is, but he's no one you'd want to know. Ostensibly, Melvin is disabled: he has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. However, the film works in subtle ways to let us know that Melvin is really "everyman", or at least "every suitor." The most obvious indication of this was Carol's mother's outburst: when Carol, frustrated with Melvin's behaviour, yells at her mother, "Why can't I have a normal boyfriend?" Her mother responds, "Everybody wants that, dear, but they don't come that way." There is no talk of disability or Melvin's absolutely bizarre behaviour here. The implication is that Melvin, with all his bizarre habits, is no worse than any other man that Carol might meet.
The female characters have their own personality quirks, but they are given kinder treatment. Carol's mother is always eavesdropping, but she's nosy in that sweet don't-mind-me kind of way. The film treats her more as a force acting on Carol than as an independent character. Carol, her mother, and her son live together in a dive apartment with no doors (only curtains), so her mother can hear everything that is going on, and occasionally pops her head in to offer pearls of motherly advice. This may be a WASP woman's nightmare, but a sweet and caring nightmare.
Carol is the centre of the film and the only person who can handle Melvin. She's a hardworking single mom with a chronically sick boy, forced to live with her mother in the poor part of town. She's a straight-talking, no-nonsense kind of person, and she doesn't let Melvin get away with any crap. She's sensitive, kind, intelligent, honest, courageous, and beautiful. She is, in short, the Perfect Woman: self-confident, self-sufficient, and self-sacrificing. Just the way every good little self-absorbed, feminist WASP girl wants to see herself. Melvin, the walking neurosis, is uncouth, loud, demanding, self-absorbed, selfish, and monumentally insensitive: just the image that every little self-absorbed, feminist WASP girl has of men.
The only woman who comes off badly in the film is the hot-pants blonde secretary, squirming in her seat and gushing over Melvin's writing. She gets the classic put-down for her trouble. I could just feel all of the women in the theatre silently cheering. After all, what woman could other women hate more than the big-tit blonde secretary who wants to sleep with every man she sees? Not only is she annoying, but the implication is that she's giving it away practically for free, which is high treason.
These characters bothered me because Carol is tough and practical, but she's also practically a saint. On the other hand... there is no other hand: there were no good men in this film who weren't gay. The fact that this film dances so deftly around the sacred cows of feminism while gleefully bashing men left a bad taste in my mouth.
To make matters worse, many statements in the film seem taken from an extreme vision of women's logic. For example, at one point, Helen Hunt's character calls Melvin, "You absolute horror of a human being." Is this not hyperbole at its worst? Melvin is rude, offensive, and selfish, but he's not a "horror of a human being." Karla Homolka is a "horror of a human being"; Clifford Olsen is a "horror of a human being"; Jeffrey Dalmer was a "horror of a human being"; Melvin is just not a nice person. The message here is that being uncouth and insensitive should be a punishable offense, an idea that seems to sit well with women, but not with any men I know.
At another point, Carol tells Melvin he has to come up with a compliment or she'll walk out on him. After some thought, he says that she "...makes [him] want to be a better man." She says that that's the best compliment she's ever heard in her life. Isn't that what most North American women believe? That every man is scum until a good woman can get a hold of him and make something of him? The only times in the movie that Melvin gets any sympathy from Carol or the camera are when he humbles himself. Then, suddenly, he goes from being dog meat to being a love object. When he's at his lowest point, when he's broken, then he's adorable. We're not supposed to care about Melvin's bitterness, or his sickness, or his problems; we're supposed to care only about his potential to be reshaped.
Simon suffers from "painter's block" after he is beaten by the street punks. He has no inspiration; he can't seem to pick up his brush again. Then, suddenly, near the end of the film, he sees Carol getting out of the bath and... presto! He is inspired by her nude form! He must sketch her! He is cured! Paint me cynical, but I saw this as yet another nod in the direction of Woman as Goddess, She Who Cures All. Is the spirit of this any different from that at work in the "Dr. Mom" cough syrup ads? Apparently, a woman's touch is the perfect medicine.
At the end of the movie, Melvin wins back Carol by saying, "I'm the only person who can see how absolutely perfect you are, in everything you do, in your every action. You're there in that diner serving eggs, and no one else can see how straight you are, how [insert compliments here] you are, but I see it. Is that so bad to be around?" Then, out of nowhere, comes a happy ending, of sorts. Melvin still isn't walking on the cracks in the sidewalk, but at least they're together. Again, isn't this what every woman in North America wants to hear? That despite being a waitress in a two-bit diner making lousy money, she is somehow special, wonderful, magical, even perfect, just because she is a woman?
In the end, after curing Simon and having the guts to accept Melvin's gift of a doctor's services to cure her son, Carol takes Melvin as her boyfriend, even though he's selfish, uncivilized, obnoxious, and has OCD. In short, he's "damaged goods," but she'll take him anyway because nothing better is likely to come along. Does this sound familiar? Isn't this the way most North American women see their men?
Although I like this film, I think that it demeans itself by bowing and scraping far too often at the altar of Woman. Let's face it: Jack Nicholson is the one of the best actors since Jimmy Stewart, and Helen Hunt is no slouch, either. This could have been an brilliantly-acted, engaging story of a man with a personality problem and the woman who grew to love him, but instead it is a brilliantly-acted caricature that panders to feminist prejudices.
