"In one scene, an adoring fan asks Melvin his secret to writing women. I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability, he says, an epic burn forever seared in my brain. Of course Melvin's anti-charm offensive only goes so far in a James L Brooks project. Before long, the rudeness erodes as Melvin is forced on to a journey of self-discovery with the nextdoor neighbor he can't abide (Greg Kinnear) and the diner waitress he can't live without (Helen Hunt)."
"The middling YA ghost-author, borderline alcoholic and psychotic prom queen bitch rampages back to her home town so she can save her high school boyfriend Buddy, convinced he's miserable and desperate for an out (an ugly baby, a cardigan-wearing wife and a shabby chic house in the suburbs just imagine). But it's Mavis, as played by an astonishingly awful Charlize Theron, who is truly miserable, a stunted, peaked-in-high-school bully who just can't move on from her long ago heyday."
As Good As It Gets follows Melvin Udall, a bestselling romance author and obsessive-compulsive New Yorker whose abrasive demeanour masks loneliness. Melvin weaponizes his OCD and dislikes crowds, but an exchange about writing women and subsequent interactions with a neighbor and a diner waitress force him toward self-awareness. He softens without losing his essential grumpiness. Young Adult centers on Mavis Gary, a middling YA ghostwriter and alcoholic who returns to her hometown determined to reclaim a former boyfriend. Mavis's vindictive, stuck-in-high-school behavior undercuts any tidy redemption. Both films present flawed, often unlikable protagonists whose journeys complicate conventional redemptive arcs.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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