'3BlackChicks Review...'
NURSE BETTY (2000) Rated R; running time 112 minutes Genre: Comedy IMDB site: http://us.imdb.com/Details?0171580 Official site: http://www.nurse-betty.com/ Written by: John C. Richards, James Flamberg Directed by: Neil LaBute Cast: Morgan Freeman, Renee Zellweger, Chris Rock, Greg Kinnear, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Tia Texada, Crispin Glover, Harriet Sansom Harris, Aaron Eckhart, Kathleen Wilhoite (Sue Ann), Sheila Kelley (Joyce), Allison Janney (Lyla), Sung Hi Lee (Jasmine), Laird Mackintosh (Dr. Lonnie Walsh)
Review Copyright Rose Cooper, 2000 Review URL: http://www.3blackchicks.com/bamsnurse.html
Have you ever found yourself watching a movie that you know you're "supposed" to like, but it just fails to grab you like you thought it would?
Happens to me all the time lately.
The Story (WARNING: **spoilers contained below**): Betty Sizemore (Renee Zellweger) is stuck somewhere between Wonderland and Oz.
A stone soap opera junkie living and breathing the serial "A Reason To Live", waitress Betty is unable to cope with reality when she sees her rotten car salesman husband Del (Aaron Eckhart) scalped by wired hitman Wesley (Chris Rock) and his much more Zen accomplice, Charlie (Morgan Freeman). So Betty creates her own reality: her mind convinces her that she is the ex-fiancee of Dr. David Ravell, a fictional soap opera character played by George McCord (played by Greg Kinnear). Betty so believes she is destined to be with Dr. David - remember, the fictional soap opera character played by a fictional actor played by a real [I suppose] actor - that she takes off from Neverneverland, Kansas, to pursue her dream man, much to the dismay of local yokel Sheriff Ballard (Pruitt Taylor Vince) and reporter Roy (Crispin Glover), who wonder just how involved Betty was in Del's death.
And following Betty in hot pursuit are Wesley and Charlie, who want something Betty may not know she has...
The Upshot: All the signs were there. I should've loved this movie. It's my kind of flick: weird in a RAISING ARIZONA kinda way, filled with great acting, and one that avoided the easy out of making the local yokels look butt-dumb (as witnessed by Charlie's opening conversation with Del). With all of that going for it, you might think I'd be tickled pink after watching NURSE BETTY. I wasn't.
To be sure, it had its good points. Through "Betty", I gained a whole new level of respect for Renee Zellweger. Rarely has an actor been more perfectly cast; she had Space Cadet down. I've loathed Zellweger in previous movies [THE BACHELOR especially, though I can't blame her entirely for ME, MYSELF, AND IRENE. There's more than enough blame to go around for that one], but she shined brightly as Betty in "Betty". Equally good was Morgan Freeman, though I always have to contend with the fact that he reminds me of my mama's preacher, Rev. Isaac [except for the cussin'. By Mr. Freeman, not Rev. Isaac. uh...] when I watch Freeman on screen. Still, Freeman is always a joy to watch; he classes up the joint in most every movie he's in.
The balance of the surrounding, supporting cast also defies my relatively low-rating of "Betty". Rarely have I enjoyed most of the supporters of a main story the way I did in this movie; from Greg Kinnear's surprisingly light touch with David/George (more of a sarcastic actor in his previous turns, Kinnear's performance here might go unfairly unnoticed. Bammer sez notice it) to Crispin Glover's (for once) not-over-the-top Roy, to Tia Texada's out-of-the-blue-friend Rosa, to Harriet Sansom Harris as Ellen the world-weary bartender (hard to believe she plays Bebe on NBC's FRASIER, eh?), the people living in Betty's Neighborhood were a fun bunch o' folks.
With all that, why'd I give NURSE BETTY the cautionary flashing yellowlight? It's simple, really, having had a little something to do with the nosebleed my Disbelief got from having to be Suspended for far too long at far too great a height. The aforementioned RAISING ARIZONA was farce at its finest, and though it did stretch the imagination, I could easily see its situations play themselves out. But never, not for one second, did I even *begin* to believe that Charlie, Zen hitman though he might have been, would go gaga for Betty the way he did. That, combined with "Betty"'s lack of a strong voice on either side of the comedy scale - it wasn't broad enough to be good farce, nor dark enough to be a great black comedy - diminished my enjoyment of the tale.
And once my Disbelief got an altitude migraine, that was all she wrote. Everything went downhill from there.
The "Black Factor" [ObDisclaimer: We Are Not A Monolith]: I started to not even included the BF here; after all, NURSE BETTY never directly dealt with it (much to its credit, says I), so...why me, why here, why now? Alas, it has more to do with what I read about the movie before it came out, than the movie itself.
I received a forwarded email message from one of 3BC's readers that described the characters of Wesley and Charlie as "drug dealers" instead of the hitmen they clearly portray in this movie. While on the one hand, I probably shouldn't trip over such things, and on the other a thug is a thug is a thug, I got my Dander up over the description. After all, the Hitman Profession is a time-honored calling in Show Bidness (witness THE GODFATHER, GOODFELLAS, THE SOPRANOS, et al) - but nobody loves a drug dealer (NEW JACK CITY), eh? Well, maybe except for an older White British female drug dealer (SAVING GRACE). Hmmm...
Took a while for my Dander to recover from that little faux pas, it did.
Bammer's Bottom Line: Not for nuthin', but the Governor of the Great State Of Michigan - Republican stalwart John Engler - was in my NURSE BETTY audience yesterday. I wonder what Gov. Engler thinks of a comedy in which two Black guys scalp a White guy, wax philosophic about the honorable nature of murder, and almost come out as sympathetic characters.
But I should leave him alone: after all, stalwart Republican Governors deserve a night on the town, too - even if it is to enjoy depictions of the Hollywood Violence they claim to detest. Hmmm...
NURSE BETTY (rating: flashing yellowlight): This flick could've stood a transfusion of Wacky Hilarity, or Dark Pathos. The middling ground it seemed content to stand on, was its ultimate undoing.
Rose "Bams" Cooper /~\ Webchick and Editor, /','\ 3BlackChicks Review /','`'\ Movie Reviews With Flava! /',',','/`, Copyright Rose Cooper, 2000 `~-._'c / EMAIL: bams@3blackchicks.com `\ ( http://www.3blackchicks.com/ /====\
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