As Good As It Gets

Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday

Smart, funny and often viciously cruel, this is a romantic comedy for people who are too old to believe in fairyales but wise enough to accept a happy ending when that's what life gives them.

Chicago Tribune Gene Siskel

A brash romantic comedy that has a serious purpose at its core.

TNT RoughCut Graham Verdon

Nicholson is near-perfect as he slowly allows callous cruelty to give way to vulnerability in one of the most original, idiosynchratic roles of the year.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

What Brooks manages to do with them as they struggle mightily to connect with one another is funny, painful, beautiful, and basically truthful--a triumph for everyone involved.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

In As Good as It Gets, his (Brooks) mastery of the nuances of language and emotion has turned the most unlikely material into the best and funniest romantic comedy of the year.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Nicholson, Hunt, and Kinnear will win you over as they turn the film into a valentine to New York's walking wounded.

USA Today Mike Clark

It's a case of actors and strong writing coming together, and it's uncommon in contemporary movies.

Film.com Tom Keogh

Over the course of two-and-a-half hours, the film not only gets up on wobbly legs but learns to dance by the closing credits.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

As funny as it's got all year. Manipulative and calculating? Sure. Submit! Enjoy!

Film.com Moira Macdonald

An actor's movie full of little pleasures, with a few unexpected sparks.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Stephen Thompson

It all adds up to a compelling, deftly executed film that thoughtfully examines the actions and motivations that draw people together, directing their uneasy relationships.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

You'll laugh and cry at the film, but you'll bridle, too, at Brooks' clumsy technique.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The result takes the audience on a screwball odyssey that mixes engaging twists with off-putting turns -- often fun, always watchable, but never quite as good as it could be.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

There's so much good here, in the dialogue, the performances and the observation, that the movie succeeds at many moments even while pursuing its doomed grand design.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

The movie often verges on being too much; Brooks' supreme balancing act is to keep it all under control.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Not a positive triumph, but it does bring a smile to the face and, perhaps in some cases, a tear to the eye.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Appreciate it instead as an exceedingly well-crafted fairy tale, alive with eccentric, overdrawn Dickensian characters and irresistibly wholehearted sentiment, and you'll enjoy perhaps the most accomplished and satisfying work of Brooks' career as a middlebrow entertainer.

Film.com Mary Brennan

It may be a very good, very Brooksian sitcom, but it's accomplished entirely with the broad strokes and resolutely flat surfaces of television.

Film.com John Hartl

Even as you question the central premise, Brooks makes you want to buy into it.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

A cute premise that, upon closer inspection, rings falser rather than truer. It's pretty good, but not nearly as good as Brooks gets.

The New York Times Janet Maslin

Wicked, but it works.

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

Billed cleverly as a comedy from the heart that goes for the throat. If only Brooks had had the guts to avoid the schmaltz.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A sporadically funny romantic comedy with all the dramatic plausibility and tonal consistency of a TV variety show.

Newsweek David Ansen

As Good as It Gets works: by the end you'll no doubt be won over by its cranky hero. But for those of us who cherish the quirkily unformulaic Brooks of old, it's a tainted victory.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Nicholson, one of the best actors in American screen history, is miscast again… He is quite visibly uncomfortable in his role. It needed an actor who could easily be viciously stuffy, like William Hurt. Nicholson struggles for the core of the man but never gets it. [Feb. 2, 1998]

TV Guide Sandra Contreras

An overstatement. The movie's too long, and the direction is sometimes slack -- but the script is crammed with withering ripostes, ably delivered by Nicholson and Hunt.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Nicholson's over-the-top acting gives an entertaining edge to the plot's feel-good manipulations.

New York Daily News Dave Kehr

The material has no dramatic center, a problem pointed up by Brooks' failed solution to it -- his use of an ugly-cute little dog, Simon's pet.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Gets bogged down in sentimentality, while its wheels spin futilely in life-solving overdrive.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

In between all the laughs and tears, it becomes painfully obvious that there's not a whole lot of story here to prop up the constant emotional yanking.

Dallas Observer Michael Sragow

Experiencing this movie is a little like watching a manic-depressive's medication wear off.