Nurse Betty

Rating:
Summary: A True Star Among Us!
Review: Don't know if I liked this movie or not. But the one thing I do know is that we have a true star among us by the name of Renee Zellweger whose talent should not be underestimated. After seeing her in a few films recently, I have come to the conclusion that she is an acting genius who makes all the other flashy top Hollywood stars of her age pale in comparison (yes, I mean Roberts, Bullock, etc., ect.).

See this film for this amazing perforance if nothing else. Besides it never gets boring. Besides there also is Morgan Freeman who I'd walk a mile to see in any film. His last scene with Zellweger is very, very beautiful. Unforgettable really.

What a trip!

Rating:
Summary: Sick, but Funny !
Review: This is one seriously sick movie, but it made me laugh anyway. There's a lot of violence, including a really sick scene where the two bad guys get vengeance on a sleazy trucker, so if violence offends you, don't watch this movie... and it's DEFINITELY NOT FOR KIDS ! Really! Sometimes a movie gets an "R" rating just because of a couple of f-words; this one really is for adults only ! I won't go into plot details, as prior reviewers have covered the storyline quite adequately, but I will recommend the movie based on its weird humor and the fine performances by Zellweger, Freeman and Rock. If you like offbeat, black humor, you'll probably enjoy "Nurse Betty."

Rating:
Summary: A good comedy though it missed its title.
Review: Personally, if they had called this movie Crazy or Nutty Betty, I would have understood. Here you got this woman married to a womanizer who cheats right under her nose. Watches him get murdered, and all she can think of is going to Hollywood and meeting her favorite soap opera character then finally coming to her senses once she gets a walk on part???All the while, unknowingly leads the same murderers who killed her husband to her? Not knowing of the contents in her car???? Too much. Yep, they truly missed their calling on the title there. Despite all of that, I really liked the movie. I loved Morgan Freeman's character. He did the job, yet started having feelings for this woman, and Chris Rock will always be, no matter what, hilarious. But this woman, I had to shake my head and laugh at her. My daughter and I sat up one night and watched this movie and just laughed. Talk about nutty.Yet, in the end, you can't help but like Betty. Reminds me of the mad cap comedies back in the day.

Rating:
Summary: clever comedy
Review: The best thing about "Nurse Betty" is that you never quite know where it's going. Its loose and freeform structure allows the writers, John C. Richards and James Flamberg, to fashion their work from a wide range of disparate moods and styles - and the strain rarely shows. One can question the appropriateness of a particularly gruesome scene early on in the film, but, for the most part, "Nurse Betty" wins us over with its originality, sweetness and charm. The first element is provided by the screenwriters, but the second two come principally from the film's star, Renee Zellweger, who, as always, radiates the kind of beauty and vulnerability of spirit that have made her a major star for our time.

Zellweger plays Betty Sizemore, a waitress working in a café in Kansas, who escapes the grim reality of her marriage to a callous philanderer by blanking herself into her favorite soap opera and fantasizing about her favorite soap opera character, the handsome Dr. David Ravell, played by Greg Kinnear. When Betty witnesses the brutal murder of her husband, she lapses into a state of psychosomatic denial, becoming convinced not only that the world of her TV program is real but that she must travel to Los Angeles to reunite with her former fiancé, Dr. Ravell himself. Thus begins Betty's bizarre cross-country odyssey, followed closely on her heels by Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock, the men responsible for her husband's death.

But the odyssey Betty undergoes is not merely a geographical one - for she also takes a journey deep into the recesses of comic madness. As a result, while there is humor in much of what she goes through, there is also pain - and the writers and the actress hit on both notes perfectly. Thus, while Betty's confusion about what is real and what is fantasy often leads to comic misunderstandings, it also leads to the kind of fear, misapprehension and insecurity that can accompany irrationality.

In a similar way, the writers knock us off balance with their conception of the Freeman and Rock characters. Here are men - one a hotheaded, cold-blooded, calculated killer, the other a professional criminal who admits to knocking off those people who "deserve it" - who come across at times as quietly convincing humorous charmers. "Nurse Betty" is not always a "comfortable" comedy.

With its multitude of characters, settings and tones, "Nurse Betty" sometimes seems as if it will rip apart at the seams. Yet, thanks to the skilled hand of director Neil LaBute, this never happens. In fact, the film has an expansive, almost epic quality rarely found in a comedy. Not every element in "Nurse Betty" works equally well, but for its ambition, scope and originality, it is a film well worth checking out.

Rating:
Summary: Very Powerful Cast Cannot Save the Poor Script. Bimboland!
Review: We didn't expect very much from this movie except for perhaps a decent 'popcorn' movie. There is a lot of Star power in this movie: Morgan Freeman, Renee Zellweger, Chris Rock, Greg Kinnear, and a few more solid actors. This offbeat 'comedy' is flat out dead in the first half. We were reaching for the remote to shut off the DVD, but decided to continue since it was a weeknight and didn't have time to restart another movie. Many movies start off stong and end weak. This movie, however, improved from a 1 star movie to a 2.5 star movie in the second half. Although I normally enjoy Renee Zellweger very much, it is hard to determine whether she was the victim of a bad script, or simply could not pull off roleplaying a person with dissociative amnesia--she simply portrayed a bimbo the entire movie. I've seen her perfom much better in movies like "Jerry Macguire". I half to chalk it up to the terrible script or dissapointing directing. Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock were also dissapointing in this movie, so I'm chalking it up to a terrible script. The movie finally pulls together towards the end, but still falls well flat of falling into any deserving category; this movie doesn't qualify for either a comedy or drama, and simply falls into 'no man's land'.

Rating:
Summary: one of the worst I've seen
Review: If there was a minus star, thats what I would have given this film. If Chris Rock wasn't in it, I might have given it the one star. what a disappointment. Just look at how many you can buy used and that should tell you something right there.

Rating:
Summary: Bad DVD Transfer and color emphasis
Review: The movie was - well....ok - the plot was confusing and strange -overall however, worth watching. The DVD transfer, however was terrible. The color changes drove me nuts. I think this was done on purpose to enhance the film but it was done in very bad taste. I kept thinking there was something wrong with my new TV - it became obvious that the director kept messing with color and lighting from scene to scene. Sometimes the picture was perfect and stunning - most of the time, however, it was too red, too yellow, etc.

If you rent this DVD - it isn't alien's messing with your TV - it is a very bad Film to DVD transfer and the director messing with colors.

Rating:
Summary: Better than expected....
Review: ...I thought this was going to be cute cookie-cutter chick comedy, but it ended up being quite dark and original. Some reviewers have complained about the violence in the film, but these elements are justified and logical....the people involved in the violence generally get what they deserve (which kinda bugs me about lighthearted films where someone dies....the person that dies always is set up as a complete jerk, just to make the audience feel better...Boo!).

Anyway, definitely a quirky, vivid film worth the acclaim it has received. All actors involved do a fine job (especially Morgan). Don't, however, expect a hilarious performance out of Chris Rock--his character is somewhat unpleasant and cynical. However, he pulls it off well...just don't expect the humor he is known for.

The extras are pretty good, too...the soap opera episodes are included (9 of them, about 5 minutes each), as well as commentary tracks by the director and cast, and a second track with the director and film crew. The movie trailers and TV spots looked totally unfamiliar to me--I don't really remember this film being in theaters!

Rating:
Summary: Cute, edgy and very funny
Review: This is an adorable, if somewhat edgy, comedy from a clever and witty script by John C. Richards, crisply directed by the very talented Neil LaBute, proving that he can handle comedy just as adroitly as he can the art house movie.

Renée Zellweger stars as Betty Sizemore, a sort of Doris Day of the 21st century, a waitress from Kansas whose fantasy life centers around Dr. David Ravell (Greg Kinnear), star of a TV soap opera called, "A Reason to Live," to such a fanatical degree that she has memorized lines from the show after watching the tapes over and over again. (This will come in handy later on.) Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock play a father-son team of cocaine-dealing hit men who ignite the premise of the movie by murdering Betty's slimy used car salesman husband, played by Aaron Eckhart, who starred in In the Company of Men (1997), also directed by Neil LaBute. Chris Rock is a comedic psychopath, and Freeman a fatherly murderer whose favorite dictum is "three in the head, you know they're dead." One of the amazing and characteristic things about Morgan Freeman is that even while playing a professional criminal, he manages to sound like the wisest, gentlest man you ever knew.

True, the plot relies heavily on co-incidence (Betty copping the keys to the Buick that just happens to have the goods in the trunk), precise timing (meeting Dr. David and entourage at exactly the right moment), and some questionable psychology (Betty's partial and convenient amnesia). But such contrivances should be written off as poetic license and ignored. After all, who would criticize Shakespeare for the tortured plots of his comedies? More significantly, what makes this work is the cleverness of the plot melded well with the personalities of the characters (while gently satirizing them), and some very funny dialogue. My favorite line is when Freeman, looking gravely at a picture of the disappeared little miss Nurse Betty, soberly remarks to Rock, "We may be dealing with a cunning, ruthless woman here." I wonder, could it be that some of the pseudonymous (and humorless) reviewers who trashed this movie here and at IMDb are jealous, out-of-work screen writers?

An observation and a question: Renée Zellweger has the kind of on-screen presence to delight the most jagged heart. And who really is the reigning queen of contemporary filmland comedy, Zellweger or Reese Witherspoon? They are both brilliant. Witherspoon is a little more over the top while Zellweger is more impish. It would be interesting to see them trade roles, say, Zellweger as goody-goody A-student Tracy Flick in Election (1999) and Witherspoon as Nurse Betty. Too bad something like that can't be done.

Incidentally, the song, "Ca Sera, Sera" heard in the background won an academy award for best song in the Hitchcock thriller, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), starring James Stewart and Doris Day. The reason it reappears here is not entirely clear, but the resemblance of the wonderfully naive Nurse Betty to the on- and off-screen Doris Day (who also had a hit recording of "Ca Sera, Sera,") goes beyond the strawberry blond hair to a kind of irrepressible innocence. In Nurse Betty, however, the Doris Day world of white picket fences and monogamy is given a contemporary spin. Although this is to some extent a romantic comedy, it is one in which the answer to the question, Who gets the girl? is one never seen in a Doris Day flick.

Bottom line: if you can watch this without laughing old loud and crying some real tears, you need to get your hard drive fixed.

Rating:
Summary: A Movie with Moments of Real Beauty
Review: I just finished watching this movie for the second time, and it still wowed me. The wacky and off-beat script is handled perfectly, and one cannot help but be drawn into Nurse Betty's touching journey to find another, only, in the end, to find herself. I simply sat in awe of the superb performance of Renee Zellweger. The movie is worth getting just to see what a fine actress can do with a challanging role. Wisely, the director gave the camera to her, and the end result was magnificent. The entire cast worked very well together to make this movie much more than mere entertainment. I greatly admire Morgan Freeman, and he, as usual, gives a wonderful performance. I was also impressed by the fine use of music in the film to help create mood. This is a movie not everyone will like, but I think it will hold a special place in the hearts of those it touches. The only negative thing I can say about the movie is the needless use of profanity. I added nothing to the film, and hurt a lovely script. Bravo, for "Nurse Betty." Thanks for a great movie.