cinescot

Well, SCOTTMCON finally got around to seeing this one .. and he's a perennial Jack Nicholson, and a romantic.

It is very worth your time; and very worth a Golden Globe Award or Oscar for Best Actor, Best Actress & Best Film..

This warm Brooklyn based comdey takes a close look at three human beings interlinked by their circumstances ... Jack Nichoson .. the writer ... Helen Hunt .. the waitress at his favorite restaurant (West Side) and Greg Kinnear as a painting disciple of Paul Cadmus living next door to Nicholson ... and recovering from a beating/mugging .. and worried at losing his home & studio.

Nicholson plays the New York literate & cycnic to the hilt. His life is so shaped, so arranged that he becomes deranged at displacements Like his favorite waitress' day off..

Helen is his favorite waitress .. he is at ease with her; he falls in love with her ; she thinks he's a little crazy but "worth an investment?"

These people meet and share their lives in this fine human comedy bringng Hunt her Oscar and her transit from TV & stage to the cinema.

It is a Nicholson "tour de froce" .. and New York City and her people never looked tougher, kinder, friendlier, nor more real.

Cuba Gooding Jr "cleans up" with a fine supporting role as a foil for Nicholson. All acceptbale New York manners apply ... and Nicholson behaves as if he's re-learning them. Hunt is a sympathy attraction as a table-waitning working mother whose looks, and sick son attracts the pennies and sympathy of Nicholson.

Never selling herself short .. she asks her mother: "Why can't I have a normal boyfriend like everyone else? Someone who doesn't worry me about going beserk or losing control of himself?"

"That's what everyone wnts!" says Mom ...'They don't exist!"

Roll and relax with this one .. and see if "macho" writer can spark and prompt people back to life and refine himself into love.

Hat's off to the Baltimore weekend scene as Helen Hunt's character declares "My drink's folliowng me!" ..a comedic mannered interlude leftoevr from the days when a man or woman on the make didn't take her drink from the bar to avert "hustling".

Hunt doesn't hustle. ..she just holds out .. the prize is human calculus!

Give it Romance ... *****/5 & *****/5 overall

Though from my title, they could have been featured, Julia Roberts & Hugh Grant team for a fun summer romance as the British and Americans do it, when they meet in London ... and want each other .. from star-off aloof & curiosity to seduction & entanglement .. this film follows its expected form .. pairing Roberts as an American actress doing a London area movie .. who walks in to the TRAVEL book shop of Hugh Grant in Notting Hill in London's Portobelllo Road ... Yes the place with the "flea market" beyond Paddington Station in the West End. Having been away from London for over a decade, I'd forgotten the scenery west of the Park; and the Manhattan - Washington DC - La mix of London;'s peoples... (Though the film could have had more races ... as reality ... it captured the mixed flavor like Chelsea of London's gentry and middle class immigrants.

Grant and Roberts are well matched ... he very reserved and "square" British yet joining with the eclectic of his "group house living?" and its neighborhood "Notting Hill". She is well almost like the Julia Roberts fan club .. trying to be a "private living person as a celebrity...". Literate, with the Anglo-American charm of Charing Cross Road .... but like a move from Manhattan to Brooklyn or the Bronx ... She sips and sits ... likes and becomes involved with a non-actor on an actresses's holiday with a private person .. privacy attempted .. and the flow of romance. [Even a scene with Alec Balwin cameoing as her established surprise visit Hollywood beau]

For a two hour film this is like a good dinner without formality and many courses. Good characters, good acting ... and, MS Roberts? .. Anything auto-biographical in the screenplay? (Yes the nudity of the screen is a brief scene and there is a "tongue and cheek" Roberts nude scene (you'll see a thigh & a rib) .. But a good film about the movies treat its own with care and well ... and in this one ..well I'd place Heidi Lamarr and James Mason as a good combination to compare these.

Enjoy the scene ... and fall in love. Romance ****/5 and film ****/5

Busson does his usual excellent and new work with a wonderful cast, theme; fine music of the Arabic world placed in a futuristic context [influence of the French Islamac immigration and his own].

Effective special effects and an imaginative wardrobe of Gaultier fashions of the future.

Willis a fine starring role ... and the future is saved for ore of Leeloo?