Rating: 
Summary: Eat Schmidt
Review: Morons dismissed Kubrick's '2001' for being "boring". Well, space is probably boring. And I imagine old age/retirement is just as boring. This is a great movie. If you suffer from ADD and just want to see Keanu Reeves doing Kung Fu moves every 12 minutes, this movie is SO not for you. If you want ridiculous slapstick and predictable gags, this movie is SO not for you. If you lack intelligence and think Meg Ryan is a great actress, then this movie is DEFinitely not for you. Go back to your Men In Black and Fast And The Furious, you morons.
Rating: 
Summary: Could you make a "0 Star" rating available for this one?
Review: Is it possible for a movie to be more boring than this one? The only excitement in the whole movie was when Jack tried to kiss the woman who did not want to be kissed and she made him leave. I felt that even Jack himself was bored with the plot. Did he smile more than once in the movie? Was there a point to this plot? Was there even a plot? It seemed to me that the same amount of excitement and interest could have been generated by following any retired person around for a week or so while they live their life doing nothing.
Rating: 
Summary: Jack's the Man!
Review: A man that worked for the same insurance company his whole life dealing with statistics. A man who was married to the same woman his whole life, & yet, it was a loveless marriage. A man whose truly beloved daughter lived in another state & was about to marry a car sales person with a very dysfunctional family. A man who didn't seem to have much life after work. A man who didn't have any aspiration to be someone greater than life & had simply given in. All those concoctions produced a man with repressed rage & true discontent for life. The unexpected death of the wife triggered him to race against time to stop his daughter from marrying the loser boyfriend. In some ways, we feel sorry for Jack's character but his character is very much a reflection of every day people, that we are victims of life circumstances. It is not up to us. Or that life is beyond our control sometimes. Anyhow, towards the end, his generosity (albeit a small one)brought him an unexpected reward. Perhaps, there's a silver lining across the rainbow afterall. What is outstanding about this movie experience is Jack Nicholson's acting capability. He doesn't act the character but he IS the character himself. The movie is weighed upon his shoulder & he carried it well. A definite star quality. Jack's the man. The director and producer used the Midwestern setting to its advantage. A poignant & slightly amusing movie that would linger on in our minds for quite some time. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Simply put, boring.
Review: Of course, opinions are relative to the persons offering them and unless you're familiar with that person...well, you understand. I'm a Nicholson fan, I'm a guy and I'll never see my twenties again unless in another life. The only reason I would consider for the making of a movie such as this is to entertain those who get excited over watching characters out of touch with reality; people who've gotten close to the end without ever having had a novel thought or who simply never stopped to figure what it might be all about. Personally I view movies for the sake of being entertained, taken from common place events to bigger than life happenings. Honestly, I couldn't wait for this movie to end and only stayed with it because I was so sure Nicholson wouldn't have bothered with such tripe. Yech! Not only didn't I get it but I haven't a clue who would want to.
Rating:
Summary: one of my favorites.
Review: I enjoy this movie. It one of those that I can watch again and again. It can be raining outside, but it doesn't have to be. I could be stressed from schoolwork, but I don't have to be. The beauty of this film is that I can watch it during any one of my many moods. It's a movie that speaks to the soul, where Jack Nicholson is searching for life's answers in a world that has dealt him an abundance of negatives. After retiring and handing over his office room keys to a newbie that he has outlived 30 or 40 years, his wife unfortunately passes away and his daughter continues to love a waterbed salesman, in hopes that they will marry in the coming months. He cannot be more unhappy about what life has now given him. Yet, even more so, he could not be more unhappy about what he has given to life. He is now retired, of senior age, and feels that he has yet done anything to prove that he existed, to leave a mark so to speak. His new living situation on hand makes such a task rather difficult."About Schmidt" allows Jack NIcholson to shine. He performs brilliantly, probably one of my favorite movies that he has ever taken part in. As I said from the beginning, I enjoy this movie. And I hope you will to.
Rating:
Summary: They say that young people won't get it.
Review: They say that young people won't get it, yet I am 24 and I was able to appreciate what a good piece of work "About Shmidt" is. Having lived through my grandfather's depression after his retirement, I am in a good position to understand just how true Jack Nicholson's portrayal of this man is. Men are bred in today's society to display as little emotion as possible, to be detached and be "The providers". It is less common nowadays, but it was certainly very true in Schmidt's generation and what we see through his eyes is the result of that. Schmidt is a man without a compass, dropped in the middle of an uncaring society-- he no longer is respected for the work of decades, his daughter is out of touch with him (and has become more of a denaturalized and unaffective daughter with caprices), his wife dies, and he feels he has left nothing in the world to mark his place, that he has done nothing right or given anything precious to anyone. This is more common than you think. This is the story of the common man at the sunset of his life.
The move is about as much of a comedy as life is-- there are comic moments, there are tragic moments, and more or less they even out at the end when we look back at them. Don't be mistaken, this isn't your Hollywood glitz of Happily Ever After and the unrealistic couples and men we have seen in the big screen... aboutt Schmidt is about the average joe, as average as you can get. After a lifetime of passionate Hollywood-esque characters under Nicholson's sleeve, some may say his performance is not engaging--- quite the contrary. Have you watched your cubicle neighbour? your mailman? That's who Schmidt's concept is-- average, non-passionate, practical, unimaginative, unaffectionate, the typical male provider who has sacrificed his life for his family and has left very little time to cultivating himself or giving his life any meaning outside of his work and his role as the leader of the family. Nicholson's portrayal is amazingly insightful, and terribly subtle. It is not easy for a superb character actor as Nicholson to take on a role where minimalism and unremarkability are the keywords for a character, yet he carries it off magically-- he becomes Schmidt, it's not Jack Nicholson as Schmidt. It's simply... about Schmidt. The sad part is, the characters aren't as grotesquely imagined as you people have said... all you need to do to find Kathy Bate's character is take a good trip through the trailor homes near North Carolina and find your pick. She's not an 'evil' woman, or a harpy, or anything like that... she's just common, vulgar, base, with good feelings but a bad sense of direction, a fuzzy mental disposition and clearly an unfit mother. Nicholson's daughter's fiance is the typical sleaze you'll find in used car businesses or who tries to talk you into a deal that you know has feet of clay. About Schmidt explores the pathos of its main character through his relationship to the rest of the world and other people. It is a master work where you find your neighbours, your friends, and -to those to whom it applies and who are honest with themselves- sometimes even yourself. It is life... Bittersweet, like life, but by no means unredeemable. The last few seconds of the movie carry a tremendous message, yet it occurs only in a few seconds and without any dialogue, which may be lost in our short-attention-span american audiences of today, who are accustomed to three explosions and a body count at the end of each film. By all means, know what you're getting into when you watch this movie, but know that you are renting one of cinematography's jewels, and an undeserved underdog. Jack should have gotten an Oscar for it.
Rating:
Summary: Was this movie SUPPOSED to be funny?
Review: This film was not displeasing, but I found it more pathetic than anything else, poor Schmidt! His pitiful attempts at getting on alone, making passes at his his new found acquaintance's wife, etc. are just sad to watch. The daughter is pathetic too, in her choice of a to-be-husband and his oh-so-interesting family, although Bates was really the only funny thing about this movie. I felt for Schmidt, his emptiness, loneliness, wandering and ultimately feeling like a total failure except for his one small but important contribution to the world. Overall, not really a bad movie but passing it off as a comedy as is often done, is totally off... Two stars, one each for Nicholson and Bates. They were, as usual, great.
Rating:
Summary: A man's story, you either get it or you don't
Review: About Schmidt is a man's story, and most women won't get it. The nuances of Schmidt's life are subtle, understated, the way men communicate emotions. When the story opens Schmidt is the henpecked and dominated husband dutifully supporting the arrogant self centered wife he has long since stopped loving and likewise long since accepted as his millstone of life. He works a thankless job in some insurance office with such high importance that after he retires they toss all his files in the trash and never misses him. His wife has decided that she would sell some of "her" stock to buy a large motor home and go traveling after his retirement. He doesn't want to, it's going to be more of the same labor to please her, but he gave up objecting many years before. Then one day wife just plops over dead while doing the laundry. Schmidt doesn't mourn nor celebrate, he just accepts. He's relieved to be free of the millstone around his neck, but at a loss to know what to do with his newly empty life. He sees a TV ad for a program to support impoverished African children so he begins a correspondence with Ndugu, a pen-pal relationship that continues through the movie. He's got no job, no wife, no kids, and no particular reason to do anything. That is except to go to his ungrateful daughter's wedding. She's marrying some underachieving young man in another state. So Schmidt closes the big house and starts off in the motor home to find America and find himself. Along the way he learns about dating modern women when a very flirtatious bimbo screams "RAPE" the first time he touches her. One morning he finds himself just parked along the side of a small river watching the world flow by. He does a candle lit farewell ceremony for his departed wife on the roof of the motor home, and then drives away leaving the icons to slide off on the roadside. The mother of his future son-in-law tries to seduce him in her hot tub, and he's not ready for her yet. The other characters are not true to life, perhaps as seen through the eyes of Schmidt, a man who is re-learning to feel the world and to have his own life again. I found Schmidt to be a poignant story of every man who works all his life and buries his own needs and feelings to support his wife and family. Though on the surface, it seem sad, beneath the surface "About Schmidt" is a celebration of all the things that are good about men. Schmidt's whole life has been spend helping and caring for others. Like so many men he spent his life giving of himself, his time, his money, his feelings, and his love to others, even though they usually don't notice or appreciate him. He's temporarily lost his way when he has nobody to give to or support any more, but even then he's giving to a poor child who needs him, Ndugu the African girl. Schmidt is every man who works hard and sacrifices himself to help others, and finds his own simple rewards in knowing that they, not he, is being taken care of. It is a celebration of all that is good in every man. It's not boring unless you're so shallow you can't see beneath the surface.
It's not about Nicholson's acting unless you're so shallow you miss the meaning of the story.
It's not a sad story unless you overlook the celebration of the wonders of men.
It's not empty unless you can't understand the lives of men.
It's not comedy unless you can laugh at yourself and your own life.
It's not about nude hot tub scenes unless you're so shallow that naked flesh is more important than life itself.
It's not about a road trip unless you haven't been anywhere and don't know where you are.
It's not a movie for young people because they probably won't understand yet. Yes, Nicholson's acting is superb, the actor disappears into the character, but that's not why you see the movie. Yes, there are funny bits, and sad moments, but that's not what this movie is about. It is a celebration of men, of every man, of husbands and fathers, of insurance salesmen and maintenance workers, of the guy who mows the lawn and takes out the garbage, of the lives of men, of every man who ever put someone else's needs before his own. Don't see it unless you are a man, or love men. The men have names, are not left for dead as body count, and matter. It's a man's story, not a woman's story. If you are a man, or love men, see this movie.
Rating:
Summary: Should be skipped
Review: I purchased this DVD after reading favorible reviews and was very disappointed.
I am a big Jack Nicholson fan but this is one movie he should not have made.
It began on a low level plane and went downhill. It was depressingly boring and a waste of time.
Jack plays a character who retires and goes on an odyssey not worth watching. It is sad to get ripped off by a piece of trash like this, but you open the DVD, no refunds. My only resourse is to warn others not to repeat my mistake.
Rating:
Summary: Jack and Kathy are outstanding!
Review: This movie has a little bit of everything-comedy, sadness, happiness, all the things that we all face during our lifetimes. Jack is really great in this movie, not at all what I expected him to be, though. He has just retired as an executive at an insurance company and is at a loss. When he volunteers to help the new guy ease into his old job, his help is politely refused, making him aware that he was an easily replaced employee. After 42 years of a so-so marriage, his wife dies suddenly and Jack is in limbo. His daughter, who he has never been close to, is getting married and he doesn't think the man she is marrying is good enough for her. He decides to take his Winnebago and go see her before the wedding to try and talk her out of it, but she makes excuses for him not to come too early and he decides to take a slow tourist trip, instead, to pass some of the time. He is a rather boring sort of person. To help make him feel needed he has started writing and sending money to an orphan overseas. He tells the boy all his problems, etc. in his letters, problems I'm sure the boy wouldn't understand, but it makes Schmidt feel better just to be able to tell someone what he has been feeling. Kathy Bates, plays the kooky, hippy to be mother-in-law and hosts Schmidt at her house for the wedding. The hot-tub scene is hilarious. Schmidt is a little bewildered and put off with the family his daughter is marrying into as they are oddballs and just watching his interactions with them makes you grin. I was impressed at his speech at the wedding reception and had a good chuckle, while still feeling a burst of admiration at how he expressed himself. Jack and Kathy Bates stand out in this movie along with a good cast of other characters. If you enjoy easy, slow humor and drama then I think you will like the movie, but if you are looking for an action packed film, this is not it. I enjoyed watching it, and although there were a few slow spots (why only 4 stars), I thought it was quite entertaining. Enjoy!
|
