James L. Brooks is a man with a gift for developing interesting characters but with a weakness for squeezing them into cliched and/or manipulative circumstances. When obsessive compulsive Jack Nicholson pays for Helen Hunt's seriously ill son's medical expenses just so she won't have to stop being his waitress, the movie flows along with a lot of invention and energy. But then the movie becomes another one of those dangerous romantic fantasies where an unlikable guy is "cured" of his xenophobia by the love of a good woman.<br /><br />At the beginning the racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes made by Nicholson are played for laughs, which is fine for the movie's purposes, but then Brooks expects us to feel threatened by the exact same type of comments and then warmhearted when he tries to change his ways. Who cares about a bigoted old man's happiness?<br /><br />The movie goes a lot into Hunt's devotion to her son but does she really think Nicholson would make a good father figure? Hunt and Nicholson falling in love is an easy out because then Brooks doesn't really have to deal with the more difficult (and more interesting) ideas brought up in the first half.<br /><br />So is the movie actually good? Well, sure. It's quirkier than most romantic comedies (if you want to call it that) but it's disappointing intellectually in the end. Soooooooo, *** out of ****