As Good As It Gets

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

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

A very sweet movie for a cosy rainy afternoon or something like that. A widow, Emily, with financial problems meets a man, Donald, living in a shack in Hampstead, in the middle of London. Donald does things his own way, living outside society but in harmony with himself and his surroundings. Emily, however, is in harmony with absolutely nothing. Of course they meet and mutual interest arises between them.A sweet movie about harmony in life, and that it is never too late to find love or your own place in life. Keaton and Gleeson play the main character with finesse, and carries this story. It is so much more about the characters since there is no real drama or danger in the plot. Hence, a good feelgood movie.

Tedious and annoying movie , it was so bad we walked out !

Emily (Diane Keaton) has adjusted to being widowed a year ago in all respects other than financially. She is trying to keep her poor finances a secret from the other residents of the upmarket apartment house she lives in when she encounters Donald (Brendan Gleeson), known locally as The Tramp, who lives in a shack built from scrap in thr grounds of a long-demolished hospital. Donald happily keeps himself to himself and makes to demands on anyone, but the owners of the site have served an eviction notice on him so that they can redevelop the site. Donald's instinctive reaction is aggressive bluster, because he doesn't know what else to do. And so Emily starts helping him to obtain Adverse Possession (Squatters Rights). Which doesn't go down well in her social circle.Hampstead is an affluent, upper-middle class area of north London which is mildly snobbish and, paradoxically, under the impression that it isn't, and this underlies the humour in this fanciful geriatric romance, based on a real-life case of someone who had made his home on a forgotten, but ultimately valuable, plot of land.Hampstead is photographed very prettily. Diane Keaton has a little more substance than in her last couple of outings, and Brendan Gleeson does comedy as well as he ever has: he doesn't get too much opportunity for comedy usually, which is a shame.Jason Watkins, as usual, steals every scene he is in.Real life, I suspect, had little in the way of romance accompanying the legal issues whereas the fate of the two ill-matched lovers is the raisin d'etre for the movie. And that's fine. The resolution is a bit too glib but, otherwise, this is very gentle and likeable.

So lovely to see Diane Keaton play a character who thinks she doesn't do anything. I think that feeling is common among givers. They give without realizing they're giving. She's getting to the end of her life and suddenly she realizes she doesn't have anything or anyone. I was moved to see in Keaton's eyes that youthful realization of love. This charming surprise of a film has other hidden pleasures, Brendan Gleeson for instance, his tender wild human is a delight, not to mention Lesley Manville - her scenes are filled with a comic energy that never goes over the top, a real treat. And then Simon Callow as the judge is the icing on the cake. Enjoy.