As Good as It Gets (1997)

Director: James L. Brooks

Cast: Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear, Cuba Gooding Jr.

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: Everyone loved it when it came out, pulling of the The Silence of the Lambs (1991) trick of sweeping both of the lead performers awards at the Oscars. No film has ever done it since. It’s occasionally heartwarming, often very funny, and there’s no reason why everyone wouldn’t have loved it.

I suppose the question in 2024 is, can it possibly hold up? Other celebrated films from the era—I’m mainly thinking of American Beauty (1999), but it isn’t precisely a 1:1 analogy—have been thoroughly dismissed as celebratory of our worst impulses. One would imagine that this film isn’t going to be immune from such considerations, when it is frequently both willfully and gleefully politically* incorrect.

And yet, I think there’s something telling in the fact that while the film did win those acting awards, it was completely cut out of any other attention in favor of Titanic (1997). The performances are key here. I’ve always said that more than any other movie star, Nicholson excels at portraying awfulness and charm simultaneously. He certainly had it as The Joker in Batman (1989) (although that would be a bit of a pre-requisite for the role), and I can only imagine what The Shining (1980) would have been without that quality**. So even now Melvin Udall (Nicholson) says and does deeply terrible things, you can’t help but be charmed somehow.

That wouldn’t be much to hang an entire film on anymore, though. The quality that makes the film still largely work when it might otherwise gone sour is the same quality that likely kept it from unqualified praise in the 90s. Yes, the role is tailor made for Nicholson’s talents, but the film does reach for a redemption for its characters, if even in small measures. Even if it wasn’t for love, Udall wants to be better. Will he succeed? Probably never nearly as much as the people around him might want, but if the horrors of the current age are ever going to abate, we might need to afford the assholes in our lives the grace to improve.

*You know what? I’m not thrilled with the amount of adverbs in that sentence, either.

**Likely something approaching the TV miniseries The Shining (1997), but I digress.

You’ve Got Mail (1998)

Director: Nora Ephron

Cast: Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Parker Posey, Greg Kinnear

Have I Seen it Before: Many, many times. Greg Kinnear’s character might have seeped into my brain a little bit.

Did I Like It: Remember when this movie was released and it seemed like it was a love story for the foreseeable future? Dial up connections, America On-Line, and the impenetrable power of the large bookstore chain.

Now, it’s possibly even more quaint than its ancestors The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and In the Good Old Summertime (1949). A subsequent, more current remake of the film would only work as a horror movie. Which now that I think about it, I need to go make a note in another document… The Greg Kinnear character can still use AOL if it makes everyone feel a sense of unearned of comfort.

On that note, I’m struggling to think of a film more designed to—and succeeds to—comfort from moment to moment. Hanks and Ryan—the end result of a long-dormant government experiment to create beings of pure likability—are at the top of their collective game*, and that’s in a film where demonstrably, Hanks is playing the villain. Imagining a world where everyone from the corporate fat cat to the plucky underdog is fueled entirely by being good with a turn of phrase when they’re not eye-ball deep in a book is more romance than anyone ought to get from a single movie.

And sure, the triumph of true love against odds in a world of increasingly impersonalized communications has its charms, but that ain’t what keeps me coming back to the movie.

*Yep, I’m putting this one ahead of When Harry Met Sally (1989) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993). Come and fight me about Nora Ephron films, if you feel the need.