As Good As It Gets

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I give this movie a 10 because movies like this have to be fought for, hard and rarely get past the idea room. This is a great little movie much like Tucker: A Man and His Dream. It also I a record of how big corporations want to squash the little guy and steal their ideas. It is amazing what this man endured to get his invention credited to his efforts! Even is half was exaggerated, still incredible. Love these types of movies and want to support them! Greg nails this type of role! Great work all-around.

When it was over, my gut reaction to this movie was one of sadness. Yes, in many ways it was inspiring. It's nice to see the little guy (in this case, Dr. Robert Kearns, played by Greg Kinnear) come out on top. Whenever you see a David vs. Goliath story it's always nice to see David win. But at what price? The scene in this movie that really sticks with me has little to do with victory. It comes at the end. Kearns has won his court case and been awarded over $10 million from the Ford Motor Company after a jury ruled that Ford had stolen his idea for an intermittent windshield wiper. It should be a time for a grand celebration. But the journey has been a long one and a hard one. It cost Kearns his wife and almost his family. He reconciled with his children, but in that haunting scene, his ex-wife (whom he did love, and who did love him) congratulates him on having achieved everything he wanted and then simply walks down the halls of the courthouse, leaving him behind. His obsession with victory over his marriage made a reconciliation impossible. Director Marc Abraham filmed that perfectly, and got the point across: Kearns won - and he won a lot - but he also lost - and he lost big time. The whole movie, to me, builds up to that question - at what price victory? How much should we be willing to sacrifice to win - even if the victory is an important one, a serious matter of principle? Is there a point at which we should decide that the price of victory is just too high, or was Vince Lombardi right - "winning isn't everything - it's the only thing!"Frankly, this isn't an exciting movie. It isn't going to lift you out of your seats at any point. The courtroom scenes don't have any "You can't handle the truth!" dramatic revelations or admissions. It's actually pretty simple and straightforward; some might even call it dull at times. But this isn't a movie that you watch for excitement. It's a thought provoking movie. It's a movie about principles and values. It's a movie that makes you wonder just how far you would go to fight for what's right, even if you had to give up the most important thing in the world to do it. I'm not saying Kearns was right or wrong. He answered those questions for himself. I'm just not sure that I would have answered them in the same way. But a movie that raises such a thought provoking issue - even if it isn't the most exciting movie you'll ever see - is worth at least a 7/10.

There's no reason an interesting -- even a fascinating -- movie couldn't be made about an electrical engineer who invents the now-indispensable intermittent windshield wiper, has the device stolen by the Ford Motor Company, strives for recognition for years, and finally succeeds in court while representing himself.This isn't it, though. We learn practically nothing about the device itself. (I've always been curious about how the thing knows when to make its next swipe. What's it got, an alarm clock?) The story focuses on the man himself, a professor of engineering, played by Greg Kinnear, and on his strenuous and increasingly lonely quest.There are too many flaws to make the movie more than of passing interest. Greg Kinnear is neither a thoughtful nor a forceful actor, for one thing. He's good at being mild mannered, and he's THAT, but not much more. In his refusal to compromise with Ford's settlement offers, he projects not the pride of a man cheated but the dumb-calf stolidity of someone who lives in another dimension and is convinced it's real.The script is so formulaic that it suggests that strictly commercial considerations lay behind it.That "other dimension," for instance. Kinnear's character spends some months in a psychiatric hospital. All we see him do on screen is make late-night calls, speak sharply to his family, ask if his assistant has been talking to the enemy, and finally tear angrily into the engine of a stranger's Ford that has his stolen invention in it. For rudeness, you are avoided. For the destruction of a stranger's engine, you get sued or go to jail. What's missing from this picture is what led to his hospitalization.But then the whole thing seems glossed over with familiar cuts and pastes. We've seen it before, the underdog trying to sue the Great External Auditory Meatus Corporation, having to demonstrate the injustice with only minimal resources at his command."Marie" had Sissy Spacek exposing corruption in politics. "Erin Brokovitch" had Julia Roberts fighting Pacific Gas and Electric. In "A Civil Action," John Travolta sacrificed everything to bring Beatrice Foods and Grace and Co. to justice. "Class Action" pitted Gene Hackman against The Cosmological Automobile Company. Paul Newman almost went nuts trying to get money out of St. Catherine Laboret Hospital in "Verdict." Big Tobacco tried to kill the whistle blower in "Insider." And so on and on and on.Of course not all the heroes in these movies went berserk as Kinnear's character apparently does. But then Ron Howard scored big with a lunatic genius in "A Brilliant Mind," which I would guess accounts for the title of this movie.The guy's wife and kids leave him. That's par for the formula course. His children are estranged. His friends shun him. The Ford representatives offer him $11 million but he refuses it and they think he's stupid. He wants his NAME on that WINDSHIELD WIPER! In court, pro se, he makes a fool of himself at first but then is shown making one or two clever cross examinations and wins the case. He may win, but the audience doesn't.

Greg Kinnear was fantastic in this movie as Robert Kearns, inventor of the intermittent wiper. But there is some very interesting irony with this story as well.Florence Lawrence who was the world's first movie star and received the very first movie credit ever--the movie was "The Broken Oath" released on November 15, 1910.According to Kelly R. Brown's 1999 biography, Florence Lawrence, the Biograph Girl, she was an avid automobile driver during a period when very few people actually owned cars. In 1914 she invented the first turn signal, which she called an 'auto signaling arm', which attached to the back fender. When a driver pressed a button it electrically raised or lowered a sign attached that indicated the direction of the intended turn. Her brake signal worked on the same principle that an arm with a sign reading 'stop' rose up whenever the driver pressed the brake pedal. This was the essential concept behind today's brake lights.Unfortunately Lawrence did not properly patent her inventions and soon other, more refined versions were invented and brought to market.However, in 1917 with her mother she did patent a system of electrical windshield wipers, but it made no money. By the time the first electrical turn signals became standard equipment on the 1939 Buick, her contributions were long forgotten and she was dead." I find it amazingly ironic that the windshield wiper was a thorn in the side to not only Robert Kearns, the intermittent wiper inventor, but the original wiper inventor as well, Florence Lawrence.