Nurse Betty Review
by Scott Renshaw (renshaw AT inconnect DOT com)September 8th, 2000
NURSE BETTY
(USA Films)
Starring: Renee Zellweger, Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock, Greg Kinnear, Aaron Eckhart, Tia Texada, Allison Janney.
Screenplay: John Richards and James Flamberg.
Producers: Steve Golin and Gail Mutrux.
Director: Neil LaBute.
MPAA Rating: R (profanity, violence, sexual situations)
Running Time: 110 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
There's something particularly delightful -- and subversive -- about a high-concept comedy that turns into something resonant. GROUNDHOG DAY could have been ridiculous and repetitive, but it charmed you with an unexpectedly touching romance; BEING JOHN MALKOVICH could have been a simplistic tale of misguided celebrity worship, but it turned into an absurdist existential fantasy worthy of Ionesco. Hollywood excels at selling stories in a single sentence, and we come to expect that we know all there is to know about the film from that sentence. When it becomes evident that there's more to a film than its marketing-savvy premise, it's a heart-warming experience indeed.
NURSE BETTY isn't as thematically rich as either GROUNDHOG DAY or BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, and it's certainly not as thematically rich as director Neil LaBute's dazzling debut IN THE COMPANY OF MEN. It is, however, a peculiarly entertaining comedy that sticks in the brain for a while longer than you expect. The high concept involves a Kansas waitress named Betty Sizemore (Renee Zellweger) whose dreary life and joyless marriage to used car salesman Del (Aaron Eckhart) are balanced by her intense devotion to her favorite soap opera, "A Reason to Love." One night, she witnesses a murder committed by hired killers Charlie (Morgan Freeman) and Wesley (Chris Rock), and something inside Betty snaps. She escapes into a fantasy world where she was once the fiancee of "A Reason to Love's" dashing Dr. David Ravell (Greg Kinnear), and hits the road for Los Angeles to find him. Meanwhile, Charlie and Wesley are on her trail, searching for the witness to their crime.
It's entirely possible that NURSE BETTY could have succeeded as a comedy strictly on the basis of its wild premise. LaBute directs with effective comic short-hand -- a scene portraying Del in the middle of an affair with his secretary shows wear marks on the wall to emphasize his recidivist philandering -- and paces his showpiece sequences with a flair you might not expect from the misanthropic mind behind IN THE COMPANY OF MEN. There are sharp visual gags like Betty's perky look in her bloody nurse's outfit after performing an impromptu medical procedure, and slick exchanges of dialogue between Charley and Wesley. The performances are not uniformly appealing -- Rock yells without doing much acting, and Eckhart's mullet-headed lout of a husband is as broad a stereotype as you'll find - but the work by Zellweger, Freeman and Kinnear more than takes up the slack. It's simply a funny comedy.
Simply funny, but far from simplistic. NURSE BETTY takes the somewhat trite notion of soap operas as vicarious life for those with unhappy lives and twists it into provocative knots. Zellweger's performance never once romanticizes Betty's instability, turning her into the logically illogical extreme of a woman whose fantasy world becomes necessary for her to cope with her present. She's also not alone in that respect. Charlie -- played with perfect dignity by the incomparable Freeman -- comes to idealize Betty as the paragon of human goodness waiting for him at the end of his last job as a killer; the short-fused Wesley, also a fan of "A Reason to Love," turns his simple assignment into a "statement" so it has more meaning, and rationalizes his killing by comparing himself to God. Even George McCord, the actor who plays David Ravell, comes to love playing his part off-screen with Betty (whom he believes to be just a really committed Method actress looking for a job on the show). The resolution may come to some obvious conclusions about the need to face reality, but along the way it shows a respect for the complexity of our coping mechanisms, whatever form they may take.
With so much strong stuff at the center, it's a shame that NURSE BETTY gets flabby around the edges. The late re-appearance of Crispin Glover and Pruitt Taylor Vince (as a reporter and sheriff from Betty's home town, respectively) adds little to the already dense plot but the presence of two actors whose quirkiness can be distracting. The attempts at entertainment industry satire don't always mesh with the edgier stuff, and the tone shifts from intense to playful on a dime. In fact, by all rights it should be just another affably mediocre piece of Hollywood joke-mongering. Yet even with its bumps and scrapes, NURSE BETTY feels like more. There's something at stake, something recognizably human, something you don't often find in high-concept comedy. Thanks to Zellweger, Freeman and (of all people) Neil LaBute, there's a heart here, and a brain, too. It's an approach that takes a high concept just a bit higher.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 daytime dramas: 7.
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