# As Good As It Gets (1997)

### reviewed by
Kristian Lin

    PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A MISERABLE OLD MAN
    by Kristian Lin

At one point in DECONSTRUCTING HARRY, Harry's wife, Joan (Kirstie Alley) has discovered her husband's infidelity with one of her psychiatric patients. She screams at him until her anger is temporarily spent, and now she's lying on the floor in tears. That's when Harry says, "You're overreacting." He's not being intentionally cruel; Allen gives the line in his patented irritated defensive whine. Harry's in denial, but Allen lets us know that Harry's response is somehow worse than deliberately crushing her with the admission. He's not only being dishonest with himself and her, but he's causing her even more pain. You feel like cheering when she gets up and tries to strangle the little bastard.

Since HUSBANDS AND WIVES, Woody Allen has been in a new and frequently startling phase of his career. With his latest film, his take on the relationship between art and life appears to have gone baroque. HUSBANDS AND WIVES had its obvious autobiographical elements, but BULLETS OVER BROADWAY played the difference between being a great artist and a great person to wonderful effect. EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU demonstrated the artificiality of movie musical conventions (while paying them tribute) by using actors whose musical talents were, ahem, closer to those of ordinary people than those of characters in musicals. DECONSTRUCTING HARRY, though, is like a hall of mirrors, with auteur and characters constantly interacting. Somewhere, Pirandello and Borges are having a good laugh over this one.

Harry Block (Allen) is a lousy human being who's revered as a great writer. He's recognizable as the Woody Allen persona, but with all the ugly sides in full bloom. He cheats on his wives and girlfriends, likes to be beaten by hookers, and treats the women in his life so abominably that they wind up hating him. Moreover, he puts their exploits into his novels and short stories and thinly disguises their characters so they'll all recognize themselves. The movie's plot revolves around his trip to upstate New York to receive an honorary degree from a college he was expelled from as a student. Lonely, he asks a hooker (Hazelle Goodman) to accompany them, forgetting that he has already invited a friend (Bob Balaban). He then kidnaps his son from day care to see Dad get his honor.

For the first time since ZELIG, Woody Allen has written a compelling role for himself. Through his writing, Harry gives pleasure to millions of people as long as they stay the hell away from him. But they only hurt the people they're based on - his sister Doris (Caroline Aaron) who married an Orthodox Jew, is painted as a harridan (Demi Moore) who insists on following the Torah to the letter. His adulterous escapade with his ex-wife's sister Jane (Judy Davis) is fodder for a farcical story that breaks up Jane's marriage. He repeatedly tells his girlfriend Faye (Elisabeth Shue) not to fall in love with him, then he's flabbergasted when she doesn't. Instead she runs off with his best friend (Billy Crystal), and Harry gets revenge by casting him in a story as Satan.

The women in Harry's life are continually furious with him, for which you can scarcely blame them. Aaron, Davis, and Alley all have their turns blowing up at him, and they're magnificent in their anger. I realize that sounds like the villain in a melodrama ("My dear, you're beautiful when you're angry,"), but it's true. They're painful, but Allen finds their raging, wounded outbursts funny, and he invites us to do the same. Sexist? No, because these episodes would be sordid and unfunny if Allen didn't also invite us to empathize with their pain. Davis is fantastic when she's overwrought, and at one point hyperventilates until she passes out. Alley's even better - her crash-and-bang style of acting has never been put to better use than here.

DECONSTRUCTING HARRY is purposely ragged, with plot digressions and filmed fantasy sequences. Some of these are just funny stories that Woody Allen wants to show us. It takes a while to realize that the movie's form cagily resembles that of a literary anthology or a short story collection, like one Harry Block might have written. The movie ends in impressive fashion, as we see Harry being saluted by all the characters he has created. We can imagine Woody in some similarly exalted state, surrounded by Annie Hall and Leonard Zelig and Cheech and Linda Ash, and being serenaded by dancing Grouchos. But Allen doesn't end the film on this note. Instead, the dream fades, and Harry Block is left alone, pounding away at his typewriter.

I suspect that even if DECONSTRUCTING HARRY weren't around, AS GOOD AS IT GETS would still feel like the piece of Hollywoodized fabrication that it is. Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson), like Harry Block, is a great writer and horrible person. He's not only obsessive-compulsive, but he spews racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and misogynistic insults at anyone in his path. His salvation arrives at the hands of Carol Connelly (Helen Hunt), a thoroughly winsome waitress without whom Melvin can't eat at the restaurant where he has to dine. It also comes from Simon (Greg Kinnear), a gay neighbor whose career as an artist is paralyzed when he's brutally attacked.

AS GOOD AS IT GETS is directed and co-written (with Mark Andrus) by James L. Brooks, and Brooks is in his movie-length sitcom mode. All the characters are here to win you over, and the minor ones like Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s art dealer and Shirley Knight as Carol's mother are there to provide spurious dashes of color. The movie's supposed to be about a misanthrope who emerges from his shell, but it's apparent from the beginning that Melvin's an old softie - 15 minutes in, he has gotten attached to the little dog that he originally threw down the garbage chute (yes, this movie will stoop low enough to use a cute little dog). We may think it's daring to make a romantic comedy about a guy who says such horrible things, but Melvin's bigotry doesn't manifest itself in any deeper way, which makes the shock value of his insults seem calculated and cheap.

The casting, though, seems to be a deeper problem. You can understand why Nicholson's here. He's always had this great ability to make an audience understand his motives - we wouldn't have sympathized with McMurphy's attempted murder of Nurse Ratched if he'd been played by Pacino or De Niro or Beatty or any of Nicholson's other brilliant contemporaries. Brooks must have felt that he'd need all the famous Nicholson charm to counteract Melvin's sourness. The problem is that while Jack has the right attitude for delivering his outrageous dialogue, he never finds the character's essence. He was a plausible man of letters in WOLF, but he's too busy investing all his energy into getting in people's faces to give off the proper writerly aura. If Melvin had had Dustin Hoffman's less showy and more neurotic egomania, it would have improved matters. Regardless, Nicholson never settles into the part, and he's left to fuss and leer his way through the picture. His problem spreads to Greg Kinnear, who looks uncomfortable even before his character is thrown into physical and mental anguish.

Worse off is Hunt, that incredibly deft and irresistible comic actress. I've seen episodes of "Mad About You" that left me in awe of her skills, but as a working-class single mother in a dead-end job, Hunt is too perky, too young, too beautiful, and way too polished. With her crisp diction and appearance, I didn't believe her when Carol needed help spelling the word "conscience." The part needed Susan Sarandon's brainy middle-aged sensuality. Or, if they wanted someone younger, Minnie Driver or Anne Heche could have provided their brands of unconventional beauty and keen wit while looking convincingly careworn. Michelle Pfeiffer would have brought the whole package. As welcome as it is to have Helen Hunt starring in a romantic comedy, she's wrong for this part.

Woody Allen has taken criticism from some quarters for becoming morose and isolated in his post-SHADOWS AND FOG years, but DECONSTRUCTING HARRY still feels far more real than AS GOOD AS IT GETS. Harry Block is a man whose artistic flame burns everyone around him, and there's no redemption for him, even if he is a great writer (nor does Harry have the saving grace of Melvin's mental illness). Such a dedicated artist may have a lighter side, but inevitably he's hell to deal with. Of course, it's possible to be a great artist and a semi-decent human being, but when it comes to depicting this kind of person, we know we're in the presence of the genuine article with Woody Allen. AS GOOD AS IT GETS is only Woody's vision domesticated and made safe for consumption by sitcom audiences. It gave me a good idea, though. Maybe Jack Nicholson should replace Paul Reiser on "Mad About You." Instead of Paul's hypochondria, let's see how Jamie Buchman deals with a guy who makes Jerry Seinfeld look like the world's biggest slob. There's the new cornerstone of Must See TV.

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