When did Jack Nicholson get so old? I watched Easy Rider and About Schmidt within a few weeks of each other, and I could not believe that this was Jack. Could Randle McMurphy/Jack Torrance/Jake Gittes really have turned into this paunchy old guy? All signs point to yes; in About Schmidt, the counter-culture icon has gone from rebel to the guy that’s rebelled against.

Nicholson plays Warren Schmidt, a recently retired insurance agent living in Omaha, Nebraska. Schmidt finds retirement to be quite dull, so he adopts an African boy called Ndugu through an overseas childcare program. One morning, when Schmidt comes back from mailing a letter to Ndugu, he finds his wife dead on the floor. Schmidt is now alone in the world, save for his daughter (Hope Davis) and her mulleted waterbed salesman boyfriend Randall (Dermot Mulroney) who are getting married in a few weeks’ time. Schmidt ventures out on his own, taking a road trip (not quite as intense as the one he took in Easy Rider) to clear his mind and pass the time before the wedding.

About Schmidt is scripted and directed by Alexander Payne, who was the guy behind the 1999 comedy Election. Both films have things in common; they’re both set in Omaha and they both have the same streak of sardonic humor running through. Both also suffer from the same problem: the script doesn’t really follow what’s on-screen (and vice-versa). Take, for example, Warren’s letters to Ndugu. Here is this rich guy living in a big house writing about all his piddly little problems to a child who’s lucky to have a meal a day. It’s a setup for some hilarious writing, but somewhere along the line something doesn’t work. The character of Schmidt is too sympathetic; he’s too normal, too clueless and too nice to make this really funny. Both the script and the performance are top-notch. They simply seem to be running on parallel planes, as if they were both developed separately and then brought together. Sometimes both elements rise above this problem, however, and that’s when About Schmidt is at its best.

This film is one of the rare instances in which Jack Nicholson is not playing himself. There’s none of the typical Jack stuff; no crazy eyebrow stuff, no crazy over-the-top screaming… hell, this barely even looks like Jack Nicholson. It’s great stuff, too. Nicholson is very funny; despite the inherent problems of the film, Nicholson’s ample talent comes off almost completely unscathed. Kathy Bates has a supporting role as Randall’s hippie mother, Roberta; she’s always a solid addition to any movie, and this is no different. Hope Davis is as good as is expected of her, but the best supporting performance comes from Dermot Mulroney. True, his character is hardly original. The mama’s boy with a mullet and a dead-end job has been seen before, but never has he been so hilarious. His scenes with Nicholson are priceless.

The film is inconsistent in its humor; it weaves a thin line between a naturalistic comedy (one where there are no lines intended squarely as punch lines and no overly comedic situations, letting the laughs come from the natural procession of things) and a more traditional sitcom-ish premise. Take for example the scenes in which Schmidt is getting buzzed off Roberta’s painkillers. He lolls his head around and looks stoned, a gag that’s probably as old as the movies themselves. The blend between these two types of comedy is uneasy at best, a problem that also plagued Election.

There’s no doubt that the film can be moving, too. There’s a lot of stuff here that’s on the dot; the scenes surrounding the funeral are very realistic, for one. The nature of Nicholson’s performance means that the dramatic elements of the film are much more successful than the comedic elements… and yet there’s something odd about the dramatic stuff. It seems to be an extra; fries to the comedy’s Big Mac. About Schmidt is an uneasy film, one of many faces that change throughout the course of the film.

There’s no doubt that About Schmidt does a lot of stuff right; however, its problems are not in the vein of a bad performance or useless camera tricks and that is a big flaw for the film. The flaws cannot be overlooked; there’s still a good movie lying here, somewhere. I’m not even sure where the problem lies, but the fact is, it’s there. I have mixed feelings about this movie; I’m rating it three stars, but it deserves more of a 3.5.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older