ABOUT SCHMIDT at The Screening Room

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ABOUT SCHMIDT (2002) Cert 15
Jack Nicholson, Kathy Bates, Hope Davis, Dermot Mulroney. Directed by Alexander Payne.

Jack Nicholson's "late-career masterpiece", as Peter Bradshaw described it in The Guardian, a bittersweet comic gem from director Alexander Payne. Nicholson plays downtrodden corporate bean-counter Warren Schmidt who, following retirement, suddenly finds his life falling apart. In an attempt to re-build a relationship with his adored but estranged daughter he sets out on a cross-country road trip to stop her from marrying sleazy waterbed salesman Dermot Mulroney.

It's arguably Nicholson's last truly great performance, not least because this is a role that, for the first time in decades, actually called for him to act, rather than just be "Jack". "It's the least vain performance I think I've ever given," he said at the time, and it earned him the last of his eight Oscar nominations. He's more than matched by Kathy Bates, also Oscar nominated for her role as Mulroney's hilariously outspoken and over-sharing mother.

"Sublimely funny and exquisitely sad," wrote Bradshaw in The Guardian, "this film might just turn out to be an American classic."