NURSE BETTY -----------
Betty Sizemore's (Renie Zellweger, "Me, Myself & Irene") nursing dreams were dashed by her boorish car-salesman husband Del (Aaron Eckhart, "Erin Brokovich"). She spends her days waitressing at the local Tip Top diner and losing herself in 'A Reason to Love,' the hospital set soap whose lead character, Dr. David Ravell (Greg Kinnear, "As Good As It Gets") gives Betty a reason to live. When Betty witnesses two hitmen kill her husband, she totally loses her grip with reality and travels to LA to find her true love in "Nurse Betty."
LAURA:
We first meet Betty on her birthday, where she impresses out-of-towner Charlie (Morgan Freeman, "Kiss the Girls") with her ability to pour coffee without peeling her eyes off her soap. Her coworkers present her with a lifesize cardboard cutout of her hero along with a birthday cupcake (which Del scoffs later). Her celebratory plans with best friend Sue Ann (Kathleen Wilhoite, "Drowning Mona") are first challenged when Del refuses to lend her a Le Sabre, insisting she take a Corsica instead (Betty switches the key Del's secretary/mistress gives her anyway), then dashed when Sue Ann's unable to get a babysitter.
Betty returns home and holes herself up in the den to watch her soap on video, ignoring Del when he returns to do business with the two men Betty served earlier, Charlie and Wesley (Chris Rock, "Lethal Weapon IV"). They're really out to retrieve stolen drugs that Del's gotten himself mixed up in and Del ends up dead when Wesley overacts and attempts to scalp(!) him. Betty waltzes out while town Sheriff Ballard (Pruitt Taylor Vince, "Heavy") and local reporter Roy (Crispin Glover, downplaying his usual weirdness quotient) stand aghast in the crime scene. Her disappearance raises suspicion with Charlie and Wesley, who are ordered to take her out.
Betty journeys from Kansas to LA and secures a job as a nurse and a place to stay with the thankful Rosa (Tia Texada, "Paulie") after acting quickly during a shootout/kidnapping in front of the hospital which had just turned her away. Then Rosa gets her into a charity event where actor George McCord is making an appearance and Betty's rapturous greeting to her beloved 'ex-fiance, David Ravell' impresses him and the show's producer/writer Lyla (Allison Janney, "Drop Dead Gorgeous") as improvisational acting. Betty's in heaven, Rosa's perplexed, George and Lyla are revamping their show. Back home Roy, Ballard and Sue Ann are putting the pieces together to track her down, but Charlie and Wesley are two steps ahead of them and already heading west.
Zellweger buries memories of her last two unsuccessful flicks to triumph as a good-hearted, if delusional, small town girl. Betty's sweetness personified, but never cloying, and her ability to waft from one dream to the next is utterly convincing. Freeman and Rock are an inspired pairing with the calm, philosophical elder keeping the young firebrand on a short leash (until his own delusions take the story on yet another twist). There's a little bit of "Fargo" in these two mismatched hitmen who end up inside small town weirdness neither of them anticipated. Kinnear is well suited to the soap star looking for a new sensation to jack up his ratings, and plays his soap scenes with satirically grave intensity. Once again Eckhart amazes with his chameleonic abilities, impressing in a small role as the loathsome, mullet-haired Del.
First time screenwriters John C. Richards (also 'story by') and James Flamberg have created a memorably original world whose characters follow surprising paths. The compassion and humor in the script makes it one of the year's best. Director Neil LaBute has made a wise decision stepping away from his own nihilistic writing, showcasing his talents in this far sunnier (albeit still sometimes blackly humorous) space. He and cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier ("Cradle Will Rock") amusingly begin to block their shots in the 'real' world just like their heroine's television fantasy.
"Nurse Betty" is a rich film that always has another surprise around the corner. If some climatic occurrences don't play quite as neatly as they should, one can still take immense pleasure from the imaginative filmmaking here that can bind Betty's character to Charlie's with the star on her tee shirt.
A-
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