About Schmidt

Rating:
Summary: Worst Nicholson movie...ever!
Review: I could ask what the director (Payne is a perfect name) was thinking when he cast Nicholson in the role of an uptight midwestern actuarial but of course it was the ready-made audience. Who wouldn't want to go see crazy Jack do the stretch of a life-time?

OK, this sucker got took & found no elasticity in that stretch. Nicholson is embarassingly out of place, except in the scene where the Bates character slips him some Percodan & he does the old relable eye-rolling stoner routine we've come to love & worship. But the rest of the time he looks neither shy nor inhibited nor disturbed nor even old (although the character is supposed to be the same age as Nicholson). I had just seen I Never Sang For My Father the night before (in which Melvyn Douglas brilliantly plays a curmudgeonly old pop) so the contrast of great & poor acting was really enforced for me.

The problem is by no means all in Nicholson's performance. All the other characters in this movie are quick sketches & cheap shots, not much more than cartoons. The wife in particular is a barely a cartoon nag, (in what other film has Nicholson ever had so ordinary-looking - to put it as tactfully as possible - a mate). She appears on screen just long enough to display the annoying tics & traits associated with the mothers-in-law of ex-Catskill comedians & is then quickly & inelegantly dispatched.

Schmidt's daughter is a one-note harriden as well. With no exposition at all we're supposed to accept that he's been an indifferent parent up until his wife's death but now cares deeply for a daughter one wouldn't wish on Agamemnon. Hope Davis does a valiant job with just about the most unsympathetic character in recent movie history (neither accomplishment an easy achievement). Actually almost all the subsidiary characters seem more "real" & better-acted than Schmidt.

Through the whole episodic & dysfunctional meandering of this movie, Nicholson wears one single expression of pained amusement, as though looking for a chance to crack wise. I started to fantasize what it might have been like had Bob Hope or Woody Allen been cast in the lead.

Definitely a blemish on the face of Hollywood.

Rating:
Summary: Jack saves his best for last
Review: Jack Nicholson is one of the greatest actors of all time. This movie was wonderfully made. It especially appeals to people over 50 who have personally experienced events that occur in the movie. Everything has already been said in earlier reviews regarding this movie except for emphasis on the last 10 seconds of the movie. In an age where movies are computer generated and performed by untalented super models, one is able to experience acting in its purist form, and performed at its highest level. In the movie, Jack reads a book and jumps to the last page to see how it ends. If you do this with this movie, you will experience one of the greatest acting performances ever.

Rating:
Summary: Nicholson can act?!
Review: With writer director Alexander Payne About Schmidt held a bit of promise, even if it's saddled with over-actor extraordinaire Jack Nicholson. Knowing Jack's in the film, I approached it with more than a bit of trepidation. Lets be serious, Jack hasn't legitimately acted in well over a decade. Since the late 80's his "characterizations" have consisted of little more than mugging for the camera, raising an eyebrow and bellowing all sorts of un-PC things. From Batman to As Good As It Gets Jack exists on film to collect paychecks (and wink at the stupidity of Americans who still pay for his films).

Director and writer Alexander Payne helmed a delicious dark comedy several years back, Election. That film, along with the little seen though utterly perverse and outrageously funny Freeway helped really launch Reese Witherspoon in my eyes. Guess ole Jack decided if Payne's quirky/acerbic take on the world could legitimize Witherspoon, maybe the director could do the same for the once great actor.

Payne's new film involves Warren Schmidt (Nicholson), a recent retiree who now finds himself at a loss for meaning in his life. Truth be told not much existed prior to his retirement. After the event Warren's left with a wife he doesn't really have much in common with, a horrid, evil bitchy daughter on the verge of marriage and no life to speak of in any fashion. Worst of all, he's trapped in the Midwest! Warren's the epitome of every person's darkest nightmare life.

Through a series of events Warren winds up traveling across the country in a new RV en route to his shrill daughter's wedding. Throughout the journey Warren pens pithy letters to a little boy he's sponsoring via one of those asinine Sally Struthers type feed the starving kids programs. The letters provide most of the film's comic relief and give an even more thorough view into Warren's simple mind. By the end of the film we know Warren probably better than he even knows himself. Great writing makes you pause and wonder why more filmmakers don't take the time to create fully realized people to populate a film.

So About Schmidt's the bomb and that's that, right? No. Payne's written a nice little film and he infuses so much into Warren that many secondary characters end up as stereotypes. Also Warren's relationships to some of these characters - specifically his wench daughter - leave a weird sensation. Also, the film, while meant to be a meandering journey for the star dilly-dallies too much and drags at times. Furthermore, the film ends, as it logically should; however, the ending only offers viewers a sense of relief that they're not living Warren's life. This isn't the sort of plucky film you rewatch.

Nicholson banishes almost all of his annoying crowd-pleasing antics and provides the most fully portrayed character of his career. He's not Jack. He's Warren. Through and through, we're seeing Warren Schmidt. From the shuffle to the dazed look to the inability to physically relate to his surroundings, Jack nails Warren so precisely it's shocking. Given the man's propensity for not acting, it's a revelation to see him really dig into this meaty personage.

Kathy Bates and Dermot Mulroney seem to enjoy themselves immensely sloshing around in paper-thin role. These two great character actors steal scenes left and right with little tricks. Too bad they don't get better roles though.

On the flip side, the poor man's Helen Hunt, Hope Davis delivers yet another screeching performance. Why does Davis 99% of the time make her characters sound, move and react in exactly the same manner. You can plop any Davis character (with the exception of Next Stop Wonderland) into any film with her and there will be no difference because she has zero range. Davis, like Hunt, plays mean. That's her repertoire. If someone is listening, please stop casting this woman in anything!

About Schmidt deserves a glance at least on video. It's not as smart, shrewd or engaging as Election but it does provide some good laughs, a wonderful character and a surprisingly solid performance by Nicholson. A nice, albeit painful little film.

Rating:
Summary: A Quiet, Moving Statement
Review: Schmidt is an insurance executive, newly retired, from an pretty good career. No, he wasn't the president of the company, as he'd hoped, or even the vice-president, as he maybe deserved, but he did become the assistant vice-president. A nice career, and he receives a nice send-off at his retirement dinner.

While coming to terms with this, his wife of 42 years drops dead. Schmidt starts to think about his life, what he has done, what his lasting effect will be, and he comes to a bleak conclusion. "One of these days I'm going to die," he says. "Maybe tomorrow, maybe in five years, maybe in ten years. And once everyone else that knows me dies, nobody alive will remember me, or know anything about me. I have gone through this world, and my existence has not changed it at all." Something like that.

So he sees an ad on TV and decides to sponsor an African orphan. He sends the kid twenty-five dollars a month and gets to send him letters. A very nice device: we get to hear Schmidt's thoughts as he sends the kid these letters.

And he realizes that there is something that he can do after all: he can stop his only child, his adult daughter, from marrying the, "nincompoop" to whom she is engaged. We in the audience are shown that, yes, the fellow is indeed a nincompoop.

He goes to the nincompoop's home two days before the wedding, and finds that they are a family of nincompoops. The mother, though kind, is an unmannered vulgarian, cursing at her ex-husband in the kitchen, demeaning to all at the dinner table, and plopping nude into the hot-tub where Schmidt is innocently trying to relax. The ex-husband is a clown. The brother of the groom seems to be in a drug-induced haze. They live in a noisy and unpleasant neighborhood.

Despite his desperate pleas--when he finally gets a chance to make them--Schmidt's daughter insists on going through with the wedding.

It occurs. And at the reception, sure enough, the toast made by the best man is clumsy and oafish. The music is cheapo, disco junk. It is finally Schmidt's turn, the bride's father--played by Jack Nicholson--to make his toast. He thanks all of them, and then he says, with the camera in close-up and from several different angles, that he wants to say something more. He looks at everybody, with his glass in the air, and we realize that it is the Nicholson moment. We've been waiting for it. Jack Nicholson is going to say something--in the sarcastic Jack Nicholson way we've come to know and love--about these people he despises.

And he gives his speech. I am not going to tell you anything more, except to say that to me, it is one of the most revelatory, powerful moments in film. A slug to the head.

After it is all done he goes home and finds that he has been sent a letter from the teacher of the little African boy. Along with the letter there is a picture drawn by the little boy, and Mr. Schmidt--played by the magnificent Mr. Nicholson--realizes that he has made a difference in this world after all.

Rating:
Summary: Another Excellent Character Study By Our Mr. Nicholson!
Review: Lately Jack Nicholson seems to be developing a penchant for examining and exploring what the process of growing older means, and what the pitfalls and life-experiences associated with the process are likely to be. A few years ago, in a film noire about a retiring police detective entitled "The Pledge", Nicholson played an obsessive career detective whose life was his job, and his inability to let go leads to dismal results all around in a cycle of self-destructive behavior that is both tragic and yet avoidable, were he only to change his perceptions and let go of his obsessions. Here Nicholson take son the role of feckless Warren Schmidt, a self-absorbed executive of an insurance firm who plans to reach for the gusto of retirement and yet has such unrealistic ideas about what it portends that he has no clue what lies before him.

As quickly as he retires, the cycle of unintended events and circumstances begin to rip all of his facile and delusional ideas about his world and his place in it to shreds. His wife dies, and in so doing leads him to discoveries about her, his best friend, who had been "servicing" the wife in intimate ways for some time, and hiss daughter, all of which force him into a sort of self-examination about himself and all his assumptions that he otherwise might never have recognized. Still, the process as presented here is both tragic and very funny, and he attempts to make some sense out of this madcap set of circumstance, trying to use his old methods of perception that just help at all.

And whether it is in coping with the loss of his wife's death, the realization that he had been systematically cuckolded by his best friend, or the belated recognition that his relationship with his daughter is perfunctory at best, Nicholson uses all of his cinematic presence to enchant us with his responses. Perhaps the most hilarious scenes involve Nicholson trying to understand and cope in some fashion with Kathy bates, playing his new son-in-law to be's mother, an unattached, free-thinking, sensuous, and horny earth Mother of a woman who wants to get down and dirty in the hot tub with the now free and footloose Warren. Needless to say, Ms. Bates comes as close as anyone can to stealing the scenes away from our boy Jack.

In its essence, like the character Nicholson plays in "The Pledge", this is an extended character study which here meaningfully and quite much more humorously examines the life that up until now Schmidt has so scrupulously avoided doing. In this voyage toward the possibility of discovery and growth, Schmidt is not faring so well. Yet the end leaves one hope, and the film is an evocative and thought-provoking way of stirring us into a little look into our own presumptions and way of living. This is a film I can heartily recommend, especially for viewers old enough to see the possibilities our poor Mr. Schmidt is trying so desperately to avert his eyes from. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece from a Masterful Actor
Review: Why Jack Nicholson didn't earn the Best Actor Award from the Academy of Arts and Sciences last year, I will never understand. Because my secretary wanted me to share with her the movie "About Schmidt", I watched it again tonight from a totally different perspective. "About Schmidt" is a perfect film. It has no flaws. It is a masterpiece. It will depress you if you are feeling old...will invigorate you if you are young. If you have even an ounce of compassion and love, it will make you cry. (I cried more this time than the first).

Yes...Jack was nominated for Best Actor and the film was nominated for Best Picture of 2002. In a league of his own, Jack Nicholson has never been more "human" than in "About Schmidt".

It is a story of life...aging...the meaning of life when you are young...when you grow old. It is a story of loneliness...coping with it...and understanding that "your" life goes beyond "your" life. I'm not making sense, huh?

My dearest friend Darlene (who is on this e-mail trail with all of us) would appreciate this film more than I. The two of us conjoined (what a great word for Darlene and I), when age first set in. We were in our glory years (40ish), and we spent moments together that no one in the universe could replicate. Jack Nicholson proved me wrong. He sent me back in time and challenged me to grasp the meaning of life. As he states so solemnly in this classic..."Appreciate what you have while you have it."

This movie is great therapy for troubled couples. It is a masterpiece for the young and old. You can look back, ahead...even at your current existence and come to the realization that "About Schmidt" is "About You".

Watch this flick with a box of Kleenex. Jack will make you laugh...make you cry. He is masterful in this masterpiece.

You will never forget six-year-old Ndugu Umbo from Tanzania.

You will never forget the hot tub scene when he goes to his daughter's wedding.

You will never forget the scene where his wife of 42-years is vacuuming their home.

In short...you will neve forget "About Schmidt". It is a perfect movie filled with life's thread. It takes you on a path (young or old), where you have been, want to be, will be, and hopefully should be, to enjoy the total experience of life---as we know it.

If there's one movie review you've read from me...please watch "About Schmidt". Why JN didn't win the Academy Award I'll never know. This guy is awesome.

Rating:
Summary: Don't bother if you don't like to be challenged
Review: Forgive me if I sound like a pompous cinema-geek, but this is a movie you either get...or you don't. And that's okay if you don't. But I'm surprised at the number of reviews throwing around the words "long" "tedious" "boring" "unfunny" and "depressing". They just don't get it! The movies of Alexander Payne are very tongue-in-cheek. He challenges those who watch his films. And by reading the number of negative reviews here, folks just aren't looking for a challenge and only welcome the usual Hollywood fare with the happy ending. Thing is, I found the ending incredibly uplifting and very redeeming. I would easily rate it as one of the all-time great movie endings. Nicholson really does give his best performance. Kathy Bates is good (and brave to bare all). The script, score, photography are all tops. And the deliberately slow-pacing enhances the movie. Ignore the negative reviews, go in with an open mind, and I guarantee you'll be moved by the ending. As for the DVD, there's little here for special features (a director's commentary would be nice). Just a handful of trailers, a (tongue-in-cheek) exercise for Paynes photographers and editors using Omaha's Woodman Tower, and a mass of deleted scenes that were all so good it's unfortunate they had to be cut. At least Payne explains the exclusion for each. This is truly the greatest movie from 2002.

Rating:
Summary: WE GET IT! We just didn't like it...
Review: I watched this movie with a 75-year-old, highly intelligent former university professor. She's lived a lot. She's even lost a spouse, like Schmidt. She didn't like this movie either. She thought it was needlessly depressing, somewhat superficial, certainly not at all riveting, not particularly realistic and not funny in the least. And yes, we understood the film. Yes, we are fans of Nicholson and Bates. We are mature, highly-educated film viewers with high expectations. We both tend to like foreign and independent films over standard Hollywood fare. Neither of us plans to apologize for thinking this film is bad and didn't accomplish its goal. WE GET IT - we both understand the film and are in the "right frame of mind" to understand it. We just didn't like it. It could have been much better.

About Schmidt tries, but doesn't achieve what it sets out to do. It drags. It's often promoted as an adult comedy, but I didn't find watching Schmidt suffer through the early stages of grief and the estrangement of a child funny in the least. The movie just seemed to be a portrait in a man's misery, without a real story attached to it. Other plays and films (Death of a Salesman comes to mind), look at the unexamined life and a man's later years with more eloquence, in my opinion. The story begins to form and move in the last minutes of the film, but then goes nowhere. Frankly, I'd like to see a sequel, but better written and with fuller characters. Give these brilliant actors something to work with, please!

If you like this film, I will not insult you. I'm glad you like it. This movie may speak to you. I'm glad for that. The actors are certainly among the best in the business. We simply disagree. Warning to those of you planning to watch this movie...If you don't like it, keep your views to yourself. If you don't, no matter how sharp, sensitive, or well-educated you are, you will be accused of "not getting it," "not being in the right frame of mind," "not understanding deep or serious movies," "not understanding what it's like to age," "not wanting to hear the truth," etc., etc. It's not accurate, but be prepared. Make it easy on yourself and pretend to like this pretentious, pseudo-intellectual movie. Then go watch some of Jack Nicholson's better films.

And, if you really want to delve into Schmidt and take the intelligent route, read the book! It's quite good and explores the issue in a much richer fashion. I'll go as far as saying If you haven't read the book, you don't really know About Schmidt.

Rating:
Summary: The most boring Jack Nicholson movie I've ever seen!
Review: 'About Schmidt' is like sleeping peacefully - and then waking up in a very bad dream. Warren R. Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) retires and soon discovers that his wife has gotten old, that his accomplishments at work were fleeting, that his daughter doesn't respect him (or need him), and that the jerk she's about to marry is an even bigger moron than he suspected and there's absolutely nothing he can do about it!

I hate to say it, but this movie is an undiluted snooze, at least for the first fifty minutes. And just when you think its going to get better - it actually gets demonstrably worse as Warren travels to Denver to meet the bridegroom's family. The movie reaches its lowpoint when the revulsive mother-in-law joins Warren in the hot tub after the wedding rehearsal -- and then comes-on to him! (Yuck!)

If that's what I have to look forward to later in life - I don't want any part of it! But that is what I guess the movie is all about. The message is, "Don't take life for granted. And the world is full of losers - and your daughter is surely going to marry one!" If you find watching the obnoxiousness in other people interesting, this movie might provide you with a few chuckles.

Me, I just found it tedious - and I couldn't wait for it to end! Jack Nicholson does a superb job with the material he's been given. But since when was movie making about showing us lives that are significantly more boring than our own? My advice is -- keep on looking!

Rating:
Summary: Riveting
Review: Probably the most depressing this about this movie is the reading
the Amazon reviews afterwards...it's amazing the number of people who just don't get it. Immaturity, I suppose. Hopefully it's not sheer stupidity. There are a lot of exceptions thank god - and what can one say except what Schmidt did during his pivotal wedding speech. ..oh well, I'm very pleased -- carry on with your lives.

When his turn came, why didn't Schmidt say What He...Really...Wanted..To..Say? Why didn't he explode with anger?
(as someone here wanted) Well, because he took his shot by at last revealing his true feelings towards his daughter the night before on the porch and now, at the wedding, there's no point - he's moved beyond the struggle with her and is engaged in a deeper war, the real one, with an eye towards Death and Eternity. He finally sees his own failure right in front of him, and who's to blame?

This movie has strong parallels with the Book of Ecclesiastes and The Life and Death of Ivan Illich by Tolstoy, and other existential ruminations on life and old age. The revulsion towards pseudo-intimacy offered by the Bates character contrasted with the desire inspired, tragically, by the emotionally forthright Winnebago wife is also very interesting.

The strong Christian warning that one must invest one's money and time carefully, and to help those who really need it or else pay the price is also present.

A brilliant gem...moving...haunting...fulfilling...poetic...very funny and also very serious...as the best art is.