Day 35: As Good As It Gets

Grumpy bastard Melvin (Jack Nicholson) has his perfectly ordered life thrown up in the air when he helps out his neighbour and falls in love with the only waitress in the world who will talk to him. He has OCD and he seems to be affected by it quite severely but he has built his life around it and can function (to a degree).

He can’t stand anyone touching him but he doesn’t mind when Carol (Helen Hunt) does, he doesn’t even go to say anything whereas he was shouting in the street for people to not touch him moments earlier. The first of the many ways in which she is the exception to all the rules he has for himself. It’s a shame he is such a bastard to her or it would be sweet. He finds it difficult to talk to people and so always ends up saying something insulting without apparently realising what he’s doing.

Despite being absolutely rubbish at talking to people, he is really generous. Carol’s son is sick and she can’t afford to take him to a good doctor so he pays for a big fancy one to come and take care of him, giving Carol back her life. She’s naturally reluctant to accept it because his motivations don’t always come across as totally pure but in the end her son is getting the help he needs so it’s not even a question. Melvin also looks after Simon (Greg Kinnear), even though they used to fight all the time. He is homophobic throughout towards Simon but I genuinely don’t think he means any of it. And by the end of it he says to Simon that if he was into that sort of thing then he’d be the luckiest guy in the world to be with him.

The main thing of the film is that she calms him to the point where he doesn’t even notice that he didn’t lock the door X amount of times or that he’s standing on cracks in the road. He says that he has been putting off taking medication that will help him but that he’s started now because she makes him want to be a better man. It’s a sweet thing for him to say but then he just consistently ruins it by being so rude to her. She tells him that she can’t be around him because he makes her feel bad about herself. I really do like that she says that because it’s selfish of him to take and not to be kind in return. Never spend time with people who make you feel bad about yourself, you always deserve more than that.

I like that you can see him get better as the film goes on ‘til eventually he doesn’t seem all that bad. He’s trying at least. While I don’t think he should be putting all his changes on Carol, she is helping him. It’s probably better for him to do it for himself than for her but we wouldn’t have a film then, would we? People are always doing things for other people rather than just doing them for themselves. I can’t tell whether I think that’s good or bad.

8/10