As Good as it Gets

'Romantic comedy' may be a convenient way to describe this story about three New Yorkers and their bizarre relationships with one another but it hardly seems adequate to fully convey the actual tone of the piece which is far darker and more complex than you might at first imagine.

Nicholson is Mevin Udall, a successful and (gloriously politically-incorrect) novelist who suffers from an obsessive-compulsive disorder - a fear of germs and stepping between the cracks in pavements are just two of his bizarre fetishes - as well as a complete lack of social graces. Saying exactly what he thinks without thinking is one of his more endearing qualitites. Carol Connelly (Hunt) is the waitress who serves him breakfast every day, and one of the few people who can give as good as she gets, especially when it comes to Melvin's verbal assaults. Simon Nye (Kinnear), Melvin's gay neighbour, completes this principal trio of characters and it is his hospitalisation, following a brutal beating, that provides the catalyst for an onset of significant emotional changes in Melvin's previously well-ordered existence that has been, up to now, purely self-centred and self-obsessed.

Brooks, whose enviable track record as writer-director includes Terms Of Endearment and Broadcast News, has extracted wonderful performances from his cast and proves not only can he create memorable characters and great lines, but an immensely watchable 'feel-good' movie.

Romantic and comic, As Good As It Gets is much more than simply the sum total of both those things, and the proof of this has been considerable box-office success on both sides of the Atlantic.

Simon C. Williams