Movie Review:

About Schmidt

    Here's what Warren Schmidt orders at Dairy Queen: a medium Blizzard with vanilla ice cream, Reese's Pieces, and cookie dough.

    The problem with About Schmidt, the latest film from writer/director Alexander Payne (Election), is that it is far too meticulous in its depiction of Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson)'s life as he attempts to adjust to retirement.  Attempting to fill the void, he signs up for the Child Reach program, becoming the foster parent to Ndugu, a six-year-old Tanzanian boy to whom Schmidt writes long, rambling letters he uses to express his frustrations over his now-miserable life.  The other half of his time is spent trying, completely unsuccessfully, to stop his only daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis) from marrying Randall (Dermot Mulroney), a dim-witted waterbed salesman.

    That's about the entire plot.  The film relies on Schmidt's semi-breakdown after his wife dies unexpectedly to carry most of it, and the emotional impact just isn't there.  The idea is that Schmidt didn't know how good he had it when his wife was still around - but by and large the audience doesn't see that.  All that's shown, because of the film's essentially first-person nature, is Schmidt's annoyance with his wife.  When she's gone, Schmidt lets the house become a mess and lives on frozen dinners, but just as he begins to realize how much he misses his wife, he discovers a thirty-year-old affair between his wife and best friend, and all that goes out the window.

    Payne does an excellent job of making the audience feel like they are living Warren Schmidt's boring, boring life.  Unfortunately, this makes the film something of an ordeal to sit through, particularly since the plot does not fly off the screen and grab the viewer.   Filmgoers could be forgiven for exiting the theater feeling like they had been there since sometime that morning.

    In fact, the film would probably be nearly unwatchable were it not for Nicholson.  With Schmidt onscreen in practically every frame, Nicholson needs to deliver a strong performance, and he does.  He brings a subtlety to Schmidt, the ability to convey with a facial expression what other actors might have a tough time communicating even with a line of dialogue.  Schmidt's desperation, his loneliness, his frustration - all of it is readily accessible with a single look at Nicholson.

    Nicholson can and does veer between the comic and tragic with expertise; the same cannot really be said of the film, which switches a bit clumsily from emotional scenes to sections of outright farce, such as when Schmidt injures his back sleeping on a waterbed and is given Percodan by Randall's mother Roberta (Kathy Bates).  It's a funny segment, but it's a bit out of touch with other parts of the film, which even when funny keeps the emotion close at hand.

    Another problem is a relatively unlikable protagonist.  As good as Nicholson's performance is, just as with Jim McAllister in Election, the audience does not find itself rooting for the main character - instead, the wish is that he would "figure it out."   McAllister never really figures it out in Election, and it takes Schmidt until the final scene to realize his problem, which could easily have been deduced by the audience well in advance.  Thus two hours have passed and all the audience has seen is that Warren Schmidt is too short-sighted to make a simple connection that would have a profound impact on his life.

    About Schmidt has one major insight to make.  That it takes a stupefyingly long time to make it is a problem that might have been solved by focusing less on the minutiae of Schmidt's life, which while occasionally important to understand the man are made the focal point of the film, something that is significantly to its detriment.  Nicholson's performance can't bail About Schmidt out.

    It just keeps the film from going totally to waste.  C

About Schmidt is a New Line Cinema release.  Rated for some language and brief nudity.