Nurse Betty

source: Nurse Betty

I can honestly say that this is the most horrible movie that I have ever seen, and I don't consider myself to be too picky when it comes to movies. There was nothing funny or entertaining about it. I was ready to walk out 1/2 way through, but the people that I was with said, "It has to get better, it can't get any worse!" They were wrong!!

Nurse Betty (2000): Dir: Neil LaBute / Cast: Renee Zellweger, Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock, Greg Kinnear, Aaron Eckhart: Very unique black comedy about fixation or excessive imagination resulting from being desensitized. Renee Zellweger plays Betty Sizemore who works at a diner and obsesses over a soap opera called A Reason to Love. She believes that soap star David Revell speaks directly at her. After her husband is savagely scalped to death, due to a situation involving stolen drugs, Betty gleefully sets out to meet the man of her dreams. Too disturbing for laughs but interesting and detailed. Director Neil LaBute presents the fantasy dysfunctional elements mixed with warped reality. Zellweger is radiant poising as a nurse believing a false lifestyle. When she finally does snapped back into reality, the film makes some interesting implications especially with Betty. Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock are excellent as her husband's killers out to find drugs hidden in the trunk of her car, unknown to her. Freeman draws laughs through a sudden infatuation with her, while Rock is violent and excessive. With that said, the violence presented is too graphic for the film's tone. Greg Kinnear plays Revell who sees Betty as an act until the tables are turned. Aaron Eckhart plays Betty's husband who gets in too deep with our two assassins. Bizarre portrait of reality and fantasy collision. Score: 9 / 10

Neil LaBute's uneasy blend of thriller and dark comedy is a queasy affair. LaBute doesn't have a light touch at all, which more than anything is what a film like this desperately needs. He begins the movie with a scene of intensely graphic violence, and it's hard to recover from it. You can't sit back and enjoy the film's comedic elements when you're not sure when or if something horrible is going to happen again. Renee Zellweger does her best, but she's in the hands of a director who's out of his element. Grade: C

I think this movie is terrible. I watched it last night as sneak preview and could not understand why people were laughing. "Betty" is an inane character but if one wants to believe the movie she is severely mentally ill and the film writers and directors use this for laughs. Meanwhile, the two men in pursuit of her seem aimless, cruel, and yet supposedly reflective. Sure it all a fantasy, but it is a boring one. I far prefer the edginess the directors used in "In the Company of Men" to this not so subtle mockery of women, the mentally ill, African Americans, and the movie watcher.

To sum this movie up, it is LaBute carrying his sadism over into the realm of comedic farce. The predictable result is that he is constantly stepping on all the jokes by insisting on surrounding them with blood-curdling violence and extremely hateful characters. There is also evidence of his continuing efforts to insult and ridicule everything in sight but then to apologize for it with weak gestures to the PC. Basically the movie just doesn't work, its plot is beyond contrived, the characters are one-dimensional cliches, there is no consistency or development of anything, and the comedy (where it is not totally out of place) is the worst kind of High Concept drivel. Morgan Freeman and Renee Zellweger are completely wasted on characters that seem like parodies of studio-driven audience pandering--no matter what, make them likeable, neutral (and neutered), and full of moral platitudes. Crispin Glover is in here just long enough to convince you that he doesn't belong in movies anymore. Chris Rock actually has negative chemistry with fellow hitman Freeman--it's as if they are acting in different rooms even when they are two inches away from each other. In effect, Chris Rock seems like a digital insert. At least he isn't as annoying as Jar-Jar. LaBute's 15 minutes may well be up by now. It's already looking like he's overstayed his welcome.

The Bad: The gimmick of this film, as with very many, is contrast. This time its the well-exercised contrast between mindless brutality and open, honest innocence. What's new is the ratcheting up of the extremes. The violence is a new extreme in this context. How much more can we escalate? Is our own innocence so permanently numb? The Good: This film is remarkably sophisticated in its self-referential layering. Here is an indicator that in this category at least the general intelligence level in the US is rising. It takes real abstract thinking to appreciate this, and one imagines that an audience in the 80s would be thoroughly puzzled. Simple films with theatric self-reference usually mix real life with a play-within-the-play. "Shakespeare in Love" and "illuminata" are of this ilk. Slightly more complex is real life within the play as with "The Truman Show." But here we have a new and lovely evolution, six layers of self-reference. We have the layer of the real-life Renee and her film character. I am in no doubt that the marketing of Renee as the new America's Sweetheart is the real basis of this effort. So Renee playing the public Renee. Then we have Renee playing Betty. We are lead to believe that the three are simultaneously real. But this has been common for 75 years. What's new is Betty "becoming" Nurse Betty. Another layer, and then full circle as the "real" nurse Betty becomes the play Nurse Betty. This last is assumed before it actually happens. Finally, we have Freeman's fantasy angel Betty, which we assume is the root of all the conflated layers. That makes six layers by my count. Think about it: this film requires a sophisticated viewer. As it will likely be a big hit, that sophistication must exist in the masses. Wonderful! Incidentally, only two people in this film can act, and one is not Chris Rock. What's with this guy?

As Betty Sizemore (Renee Zellweger) secretly watches her tyrannical husband Del (Aaron Eckhart) being murdered by the vengeful hitmen Charlie and Wesley (Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock), her bruised sense of reality becomes totally immersed in the fantasy world of her favorite soap opera. In a state of complete denial and delusion, Betty escapes both physically and mentally from her unsatisfied, small town life to search for "Dr. David Ravell" (Greg Kinnear), the handsome and loving hero of "A Reason to Love", a soap opera set in a hospital and produced in Los Angeles. Immune to reality, Betty arrives in L.A. and becomes "Nurse Betty" as she tries to belong in the hospital world of her dream lover. Meanwhile, the angered Charlie and Wesley track Betty down, convinced she is a dangerous witness who also knows about their compromising dealings with Del. Nurse Betty creates comedy and suspense by contrasting its main character's extreme innocence and optimism with the evident hypocrisy and violence that surround her. By clearly defining the protagonist's difficult life, Nurse Betty justifies its character's tendency to turn away from reality. Thus, while offering a comment about the popularity of the soap opera within the film, Nurse Betty also makes a comment regarding the widespread addiction to television and its celebrities. In addition, Nurse Betty benefits from the effective manipulation of its protagonist's mental state, particularly in those scenes where she cannot distinguish between "Dr. David Ravell", the character, and George McCord (Greg Kinnear), the actor who plays him. Betty's incapacity to recognize George as an actor leads to funny misunderstandings, which stress the magnitude of her delusional state. However, in spite of these successes, Nurse Betty suffers from the troubling characterizations through which the narration evolves. For example, while Charlie and Wesley are consistently portrayed as a comical pair, the brutality of their actions undermines any sense of appreciation or acceptance the viewer might have initially experienced. Similarly, although the initial scenes establish Del as a detestable man, the humiliation and violence he experiences with his murderers surpass all the humiliation and violence he caused his wife Betty. Finally, toward the end of the film, Charlie undergoes awkward transformations as he develops an obsession for Betty; an obsession which results in noble feelings of love, and which ultimately destroys him. Consequently, since the characters' roles as victims lack consistency, the story's victimization processes seem random and unsubstantial. All in all, Nurse Betty's indeterminacy --rather than creating suspense-- weakens its characters and pollutes its plot.

Nurse Betty (2000) This is a sleeper, a dark comedy with enough inventive twists to call to mind The Truman Show but with a greater sense of reality to hold it down. Renee Zellweger is flawless as the naive, sweet, but utterly detached young woman named Betty who is addicted to a soap opera called "A Reason to Love." This seems sweet enough, but her husband is a jerk (totally) and things start to spiral, and get dizzy, as reality even for the viewer starts to shift ground. Not that you are ever confused about what is happening or who the good guys are. The good guys are not Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock, for sure, as this unlikely and comedic father and son duo get involved, incidentally at first, in Betty's strange inner and outer life. A chase of sorts ensues, the soap opera becomes reality, and then reality becomes soap opera. And it's really hilarious and inventive and fast paced. Is it a total work of genius? Probably not. Maybe Charlie Kaufman would have added another twist in there (I'm not sure how), and certainly some of the side characters could have seemed less cardboard, or less awkward as actors. But Zellweger is unbelievable (really, your jaw might drop at how convincing she could play her mental blindness, and her awakening, of sorts). And Morgan Freeman is his usually convincing and engaging self. The utterly disgusting violence of one 20 second scene might turn off some viewers near the beginning, but if you can keep watching, the movie gets better from there. Much better.

Nurse Betty is really an interesting movie. I guess we all know someone who is so convinced that the characters in a soap opera are real, that you can't explain them with any means that these are just actors and not real persons. 'Nurse Betty' isn't a nurse at all. In real life she is an ordinary housewife who works at a diner. To escape from her awful husband and the problems in her miserable life, she has become a very dedicated fan of a soap opera. After she witnessed her husband being murdered, she goes into some kind of a shock and she loses all grip on reality. She thinks she's in love with one of the characters from the soap opera, a doctor, and decides that she'll visit him and start a family with him. The hit men however think that she knows too much and go after her to kill her. As I already said, the subject is quite recognizable (if you leave the professional hit men and the murder out of it) and the movie was funny. The story was well directed and the actors did a fine job. It had everything I always want to see when watching a comedy. I give it a 7.5/10.