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FILM CRITIQUE:
"About Schmidt" is at best a very bittersweet movie with much more bitter than sweet. And the term "bittersweet"
gives this movie the benefit of the doubt, as one will have to pay close attention or those very few sweet moments will surely
be missed.
"About Schmidt" is salvaged by an incredible performance by Jack Nicholson, who plays way, way against type
by doing something that he has never done before. He plays an unlovable loser. He plays old. He plays downcast and downtrodden.
He plays lost and forlorn. He plays with anger and bitterness lurking just beneath his occasionally smiling, but mostly placid
and bland exterior. And did I mention that he is old, I mean really OLD, like in frumpy, disheveled, unshaven, overweight,
and unattractive?
For once he's now acting his age, perhaps even acting older than his real age. To his great credit, Nicholson has dispensed
with all of his trademark looks and actions like the arched eyebrow, the cocked head, the wicked grin, and the smart aleck
retorts.
Nicholson is beloved and respected in Hollywood, so the critics have fallen all over themselves to praise him for his
performance in this movie. Well, I will have to admit that he is good, so rest assured that he will probably get another Oscar
nomination for this role.
Another great reason to see this movie is for Kathy Bates and her standout performance as Roberta Hertzel, the free spirited
divorcee mother of the addled groom. Bates is very funny as she steals practically every scene that she is in. And give her
credit for having the guts to step into the hot tub at her age while in the nude in a very funny scene that helped garner
this film an "R" rating.
The bottom line is that "About Schmidt" is a very sad movie about a bunch of very unhappy people. There is not
one truly good person in this movie. Neither are there any really happy people in this movie. They are all a bunch of misfits,
ignoramuses, losers,
malcontents, cheaters, and liars. Spending two hours with these cinematic personalities is a rather unpleasant experience.
In addition, there is not one person in this whole movie that you can identify with, cheer for, hope for the best for.
You are looking AT them rather than identifying WITH them. Unfortunately, you are also laughing AT them rather than laughing
WITH them, as the
movie is constructed in such a way as having most of the laughs directed AT people rather than WITH people. I find this
to be a situation which is often more painful than humorous.
Furthermore, this movie's portrayal of the small town Hertzel family is just dripping with snotty pretentiousness. Not
that the Hertzels don't deserve this, because that is how the book was written, how someone is trying to define their version
of humor. This is all about making fun of small town midwesterners just for cheap laughs. "About Schmidt" is not
the gentle laugh with these people, it's the acerbic laugh AT them and how dumb and stupid
and small town rube like they are in their daily habits.
Compare "About Schmidt" to "Nobody's Fool"(1994), another small town movie with Paul Newman as the
star. Like Nicholson, Newman plays a loser in that movie. The New England town where he lives is filled with losers. But they
are lovable losers and you end up laughing with them and not at them.
As a result "Nobody's Fool" is a funny movie in addition to having a big, warm heart. There is no heart in "About
Schmidt," unless it is a cold, icy one. And there is nobody to love in "About Schmidt" because none of them
love themselves.
Even Warren's daughter, Jeannie, whom we are lead to believe is filled with love for Randall, inexplicably blows up at
everyone on the eve of her wedding. This blowup is left unexplained, which leaves me unsure as to whether it is merely a case
of pre wedding jitters or symptomatic of her having far deeper emotional problems.
Finally, the raison d'etre of "About Schmidt" is his relationship with his daughter, Jeannie (Hope Davis). Early
on in the movie Schmidt points with great pride to a picture of her in his office and the assumption would naturally be that
she is his pride and joy. However, we quickly come to find out that she is very angry with him as she tells him, "You
were never there for me."
So since he was never supportive of her as a daughter, Schmidt now finds that the chickens have all come home to roost
with Jeannie having a poorly developed self image. Now she is marrying down to someone who matches her own lowly image of
herself.
Schmidt, like most fathers I would imagine, feels that his daughter could have done far better in her selection of a mate.
In this movie Schmidt fails in his effort to stop the impending marriage of his daughter mainly due to the fact that their
relationship is so adversarial that she doesn't have any faith or trust in him and therefore won't listen to whatever advice
he may wish to give her.
So she refuses to listen to his entreaty and he ends up leaving Denver having failed at his mission. A better written
movie would have had him make an effort to open up new lines of communication with his estranged daughter so that he could
have left Jeannie with some personal measure of success and accomplishment.
To have had the sole value of his life and the measure of his humanity at the end of the movie rest on his recent paltry
contribution to a starving African orphan is very trite, simplistic, and intellectually unsatisfying.
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MOVIE SYNOPSIS:
As the clock slowly ticks on Warren Schmidt's last day at work in his downtown Omaha high rise office at the firm of Woodmen
Insurance, he sits there at the ready to depart his spartan and now empty office at the stroke of the clock at five. He grabs
his trench coat hanging on the door and leaves for a new life of retirement.
Later at a testimonial dinner in his honor, the corporate officers and his long time friends toast his retirement and
wish Warren and his wife, Helen (June Squibb), the best of luck in their new life. His replacement, Gary Nordin (Matt Winston),
stands up and officiously tells him that he will be sorely missed and he hopes that Warren will stop by his old office often
to help him out.
When Warren later does this, it is more than painfully clear that Nordin never meant what he said as he brushes him off
with an excuse for an early luncheon meeting. On the way down the street outside the office Warren is further shaken to see
his work of a lifetime packed in boxes ready for the dumpster.
Although this is somewhat difficult to believe, Schmidt's whole life revolved around his career and he does not have a
single outside hobby or interest. Seeing everything that he has spent his life on now considered to be worthless trash is
a very sobering and crushing moment for him.
In his long early days of retirement spent thinking about his own mortality and his worth as a human being, Warren finds
himself affected by the appeal of one of the many television advertisements for the starving children of the world. Calling
the toll free number and receiving the application shortly thereafter in the mail, Warren finds out that his newly "adopted"
child for a mere $22 per month is a six year old African named Ngudu.
As letter writing is suggested along with each contribution, Warren spends long hours writing extensive letters filled
with adult themes to this poor child who could not possibly ever be expected to comprehend one tenth of what he has to say.
It is, of course, a ruse to fill us in on what is going on inside his head.
Helen and Warren had earlier purchased a 30 foot Winnebago for retirement traveling and it parked ready and waiting in
their driveway at the side of their home. Helen calls Warren the next morning and surprises him by serving him breakfast in
the kitchen of their new camper.
Like many men, Warren has a love hate relationship with his wife of 42 years. Now he is facing life with Helen full time,
and the prospect is not pleasant. His resentment turns to shock, however, as she suddenly has a stroke and dies one day very
soon after his retirement.
Jeannie and her fiancé, Randall Hertzel (Dermot Mulroney), come home for the funeral. Once again Warren's few office friends
gather all too soon after his retirement party, only this time in great sadness around Helen's grave site.
Warren's anger at her loss and his earlier resentment of her combine to result in his buying the next to the cheapest
coffin for her internment. This act of slighting the memory of her mother causes Jeannie to blow up at Warren and he now realizes
that his relationship with his only daughter is even worse than what he had had with his wife.
Life at home alone with the dishes piling up and the house turning into a total mess proves to be unbearable, so Warren
decides to hit the road in his new Winnebago. Jeannie thwarts
his attempt to visit her weeks before the wedding, so he turns his trip into an odyssey to the places where he had spent
his youth.
Once in Denver, he meets the Hertzel family members and has to face the reality of Jeannie's impending nuptials to a mullet
haired nincompoop with all the potential of a melon for making his beloved daughter happy in anything other than their "white
hot sex life" as his mother, Roberta, embarrassingly brags about it.
His window of opportunity to forestall the wedding of his daughter begins to close on him and Warren is now left with
very few options for personal satisfaction at having made a difference somewhere or to someone in his life.
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