| Overall Grade: |
A+ |
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| Story: |
A- |
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| Acting: |
A+ |
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| Direction: |
A |
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| Visuals: |
A |
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"Never a break! Never!
by Blanche (movies profile)
Jul 29, 2009
3
of
3 people found this review helpful
So cries Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson), an unhappy, sarcastic, friendless trash novelist with almost sixty two books to his credit, and an endless supply of idiosyncrasies and compulsions.
He has gay artist Simon Bishop (Greg Kinnear) for a neighbor, and anxious mother Carol Connelly (Helen Hunt) for a waitress at the restaurant where he insists on eating breakfast every morning despite the fact that everybody hates him, and can't wait to see him thrown out.
The movie opens with his shoving Simon's little dog Verdell down the garbage shoot.
"This is New York," he growls "if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere..."
After a desperate search during which the dog is finally found, and the truth uncovered, Simon confronts Udall (something which he imidiately regrets doing).
"Do you realize that I WORK at home?" Udall sneers.
"No.No I didn't--"
"Do you like to be interrupted when you are nancying around in your little garden?"
Five minutes later a completely intimidated Simon walks away defeated.
"Well the theory of confrontations," he says to his agent Frank Sachs is that now he'll think twice before messing with me."
This causes Frank (Cuba Gooding Jr.) to step in on Simon's behalf.
He knocks on Melvin's door; then pushes him out into the hallway.
Udall panicks, mixing his cries for help with insults which wouldn't encourage anyone to come and rescue him:
"Police! Donought munching morons! Help me! Help me!"
Frank lays down the law:
"You think you can intimidate the whole world with your attitude.Well, you don't intimidate me..."
And after threating to batter Melvin unrecognizable if he were to verbally abuse Simon "or so much as touch that dog again", Frank vows to find some way that Melvin can make it up to him.
The opportunity comes soon enough, when Simon's friend Carl (Ross Bleckner) does a sloppy job of finding him a model, hiring a guy he's not even sure can read.
Skeet Ulrich (who plays the male model Vincent) is very good in this little cameo.
He portrays a guy who starts out as punk from the street, and gradually gets drawn into Simon's world (although this doesn't change the fact that his friend's are going to rob Simon's house, which is what Simon walks in on when they beat him unconscious, breaking his arm and making their getaway).
It is Melvin Udall who dials 911.
Frank, stuck with a dog he doesn't know what to do with, at first asks the old lady down the hall if SHE'LL take Verdell, then -when he catches Melvin laughing about- forces him to take the dog.
At first Melvin is upset about this, then
-gradually- he warms to his temporary guest.
He plays the piano to encourage the dog to eat bacon, and it is in his prescence that he finally finishes his sixty-second novel.
But it isn't long before Simon (now on the verge of bankruptcy and eviction), takes the dog back.
This causes an unexpected break-down in Melvin's life.
He goes to the restaurant he eats breakfast at only to find that Carol (the only person who can stand him) is gone. She has been replaced by "Elephant Girl" as Melvin calls her, and after a thoughtless outburst, is finally kicked out of the restaurant to sound of wild applause from the staff and other costumers.
Carol, as it turns out, is living with her mother Beverly (Shirley Knight), and has a sick son named Spencer "whose asthma," she says "can just go off the charts."
Being poor, she's at the mercy of inexperienced, rookie doctors, and is in a constant state of anxiety which has caused her to want to take a job closer to home.
In an act completely out of character, Melvin interceeds.
He asks his publisher to send her husband Dr. Bettes (Harold Ramis) over to see the boy, and insists on footing all the medical bills himself.
And though he still mixes his pleas for help with insults, and is completely rood to a fan who just wants to ask "a couple of questions", the audience begins to see that there's good in Melvin after all.
He's obviously got a crush on Carol Connelly (whom he insisted go back to work as a condition for his paying her medical bills),and is still very attached to his neighbor's dog, whom he begins to walk on a regular basis.
There's a great scene in which Lupe Ontiveros (Simon's cleaning lady Nora) asks Melvin to walk Verdell, then goes off on a tangent about what a great man Melvin is,and Melvin says:
"Sell crazy someplace else. We're all stocked up here."
Carol goes to his apartment in the middle of the night, to say that "she'll never sleep with him", then writes him a thirty page thank you note which she reads to him in tearful segments while hovering over his table at the restaurant.
"Thank you." she says crying.
After which there's a pause, and Melvin says:
"Now I want you to do something for me."
It seems Simon, is in such a money crunch that he is being forced to travel to Baltimore to ask his parents for money.
He needs somebody to take him...something which Frank can't do, but has offered Melvin his blue convertible if he'll do it for him.
Melvin,using the excuse that he can't trust Simon given that he's gay (although everybody in the audience knows this is baloney).
"Are you saying accepting your help obligates me?" asks Carol
"Is there any other way to see it?" says Melvin.
This movie is great.
Everybody enjoys it, and everybody is great in it. I have never seen Jack Nicholson have better chemistry with a woman. And the script is just incredible.
Really, they all deserved the recgnition for this movie. |
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