Nurse Betty Reviewed by Christian Pyle Directed by Neil LaBute Written by John Richards and James Flamberg Starring Renée Zellweger, Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock, and Greg Kinnear Grade: B+
Well, when your husband's brutally murdered in front of you, what can you do but drive halfway across the country in search of a soap opera character? At least that's the reaction of Betty Sizemore (Renée Zellweger) in "Nurse Betty," the latest entry in the cinema of quirk.
Betty waits tables at the Tip Top Diner in a small town in Kansas and dreams of being a nurse. Del (Aaron Eckhart), her jerk of a husband, sells cars, boffs his secretary, and deals stolen cocaine. The last enterprise brings hitmen Charlie (Morgan Freeman) and Wesley (Chris Rock) to his door. They murder Del but don't know that Betty is watching from the next room. Betty has a "dissociative reaction" that causes her to lapse into the fantasy that Dr. David Ravell, a character that George McCord (Greg Kinnear) plays on the soap "A Reason to Love," is her ex-fiance. Betty packs up the car she'd borrowed from her husband's lot and headed for LA unaware that ten kilos of stolen dope are hidden in her trunk. Since Charlie and Wesley need to find the drugs and eliminate the witness, they follow Betty into the desert. Along the way, Charlie begins to fall in love with Betty.
Charlie's love for Betty parallels Betty's love for Dr. Ravell in that both fall in love with fantasy figures rather than real people. That irony produces most of the laughs in this movie that unashamedly mixes light comedy and film noir tension, as if "Soapdish" collided with "Blood Simple." However, the filmmakers never sacrifice the illusion of realism for cheap laughs or overly contrived plot twists. "Nurse Betty" is the least predictable film I've seen in ages because it refuses to follow generic conventions.
Despite its strengths, John Richards and James Flamberg's script is thin and what makes "Betty" work is the excellent cast. Zellweger gives Betty a refreshing combination of starry-eyed innocence and steel-willed determination. A character who might otherwise have seemed pathetic becomes instead a heroine. Freeman offers us a disarmingly sensitive hitman, and the angry sarcasm of Rock provides a hilarious counterpoint. Kinnear is quite good in "Betty" as well, but considering his amazing performance in "As Good As It Gets" I wish he would take on more substantial roles.
The ghost of the Blair Witch continues to haunt internet marketing. USA Films has set up an official site for "A Reason to Love" (http://www.areasontolove.com/) and a wonderfully tacky fan site for Dr. Ravell (http://www.nurse-betty.com/drravell/).
Bottom line: Quirky fun but not for the squeamish.
© 2000 Christian L. Pyle
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