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Release: 12/13/02-(R)-(2:04)-[NEW LINE CINEMA]- JACK NICHOLSON, KATHY BATES, HOPE DAVIS, DERMOT MULRONEY, HELEN SQUIBB: Yes, it is possible that Jack Nicholson could take home an unprecedented Fourth Academy Award, he really IS that good as the gruff and self-discovering Warren R. Schmidt, our title character in the warm, humorous and inviting film ABOUT SCHMIDT, by Alexander Payne (Election). Nicholson portrays a man on the fringes of life, wondering either where it all has gone or perhaps just how much there really is left of it. The film opens with Schmidt dressed and ready to go in his packed-up office waiting for the second hand to tick on up to 5 o'clock. Retirement and his next phase looming, Schmidt looks around him with a dazed and almost befuddled expression of either disdain or simple apathy about it all. His wife of 42-years, June and he are planning to take a trip in the large Winnebago they have purchased together, leaving the suburbs of Omaha, Nebraska behind... but even that doesn't seem to gel with the confused 66-year-old. In one of the more potent plot devices used in ABOUT SCHMIDT, the title character sits staring at the television one night watching ad after ad for hungry children in Africa. When the voice of Angela Lansbury and the pictures of destitute children finally get to him, Warren calls and becomes a 'foster father' to Ndugo, a child in Tanzania. Each month he is supposed to send a $22.00 check, but what works here is the letters that he writes to the 6-year-old boy... works of pathos and anger, as though he were speaking to a therapist and not a child who cannot read, write or speak English. When Schmidts' wife suddenly dies things are thrown into a spin for the man. Suddenly the plans, whether he would have liked them or not, are off and his own life is a calculated amount of time ticking away. His daughter Jeannie (Davis), who wouldn't seem to have had a very close relationship with the man in the past, is soon to be married. It is because of WHO she is marrying that Warren decides to take a road-trip to Colorado in the Winnebago to try and stop her from the wedding. ABOUT SCHMIDT is both humorous and telling in its voyage of self-discovery as Warren hits the road and does his own brand of touring and discovering. He begins to deal (somewhat ineffectively) with his own loneliness and even stops to visit his childhood home, which is now a tire store. Once in Colorado for the wedding he is confronted with the odd and somewhat dysfunctional family of his future son-in-law Randall, a well-intentioned, somewhat slimy hick and salesman of waterbeds. In a memorable role here is Kathy Bates, an aging hippy come middle class who is as brazen as she is unattractive to Schmidt, although her intentions are usually quite clear. There are lessons in ABOUT SCHMIDT about aging, life, family and the ever-true reminder of how things can change in a moment as time marches on. It is a pleasant script and an inviting one that may not have been what it has turned out to be without the magnanimous star-turn of Mr. Nicholson. This man can pull out a performance in facial expressions alone. A seasonal must see, performances and the script are sure-fire Oscar contenders. (A)
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