Review of About Schmidt (2002) by Lewis P — 21 Mar 2010

Grade: C+.

About Schmidt. Schmidt. Sch-mi-dt. The more is say that name, the more bored I get, and that's the feeling I got with this film. A character study that cheats on the showing and goes overboard on the telling, the film is at turns unbearably slow, somewhat insightful, and painfully ordinary.

Previous to this writer/director Alexander Payne had made Election (1999), which was a hilarious and thoughtful film that was like a roller coaster ride. About Schmidt is full of interlude and an excess of narration, and while it's sometimes touching, most of it is obvious and cliché: the guy who hates his wife, the guy who hates his son-in-law, the guy who thinks different/diverse people are crazy. The story is basically a line-up of obviousness. Schmidt's son-in-law is perhaps the easiest guy alive to poke fun at, as is his entire family, from his Sex charged mother (played by Kathy Bates) to his speech-making father; all the characterisations lead the plot down an obvious, predictable path.

Warren Schmidt just retired. His job was as an actuary with an insurance agency, as if we needed another reason to hate the guy in this day and age, since he's not a very likeable guy in any other area of his life to begin with. He's basically a slime ball entering his twilight, and with loneliness setting in, and a feeling of nothingness, he goes on the standard soul-search; it's nothing spectacular or exciting to behold, but as I said, it is touching in an obvious sort of way.

Schmidt is a man who hates practically everything, including himself; he just occupies himself with contempt for others rather than facing himself in the mirror, perhaps afraid of what he will see. He hates his wife, he hates soon to be son-in-law, etc, etc. We know all this not because it's expressed naturally or realistically, but because we are told it through narrated letters written by Schmidt himself.

The letters are the first problem I have the film. What kind of 67 year old man sends money to a foster child in Africa, and then basically uses that six year old child as a mail-order psychiatrist to spill his guts out to. Not very realistic, and as Schmidt was sitting there ranting in his letter to Ndugu, his foster child, I was expecting him to realize what he was doing and start the letter all over. But Schmidt is plain clueless or perhaps just going senile. Really, he's just trying to make himself feel better by sending money to a poor kid; perhaps the ranting in the letters stems from some misplaced sense of entitlment.

Nicholson's performance is touching and whatnot, but I never give two hoots about his character. Try as he might to gain my favour, I wasn't buying it. One thing I will say for Schmidt is that he never surprises us, right through to the ending which some might think is surprising, but it's not at all, it makes perfect sense. I like that the whole story is coherent and that the character has an arc, but for me, I just spotted it way too soon.

Hand's down the best part of the film occurs at a trailer park, when Schmidt meets a hospitable couple. This part of the film is strange, makes us uncertain of what may happen, and then end's up unfolding in the exact kind of obvious way it should, paradoxically.

I'm making the review fresh because I admire some of the nice cinematography as Schmidt visits middle America, and I sort of like the coziness of the story. It's easy going and, I guess, pleasant, if a tad bleak. The blend of comedy and drama isn't so smooth throughout, a small problem with Payne's film Election as well.

Something happens about 25 minutes into the film that's important, and even this I spotted before it happened. I won't say what happens, but its pretty obvious. Let me just say it's not too difficult to draw a symbolic connection between and old person, a vacuum, the noise a vacuum makes, and the fact that it means that old person is going to die soon.

So now, exiting the void, I should end this review. The film is worth seeing, and I'm sure some will like it far more than I did. The film is original, sure, but it's the type of original that still seems obvious and derivitive. Like an archetypal story we could all tell, in one way or another. Mr. Lonely, I think I'd call it. All he needs is a friend.