As Good As It Gets

Blistering performances.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Steve Martin is believable as a dentist who sees his life spiraling out of control after a series of cascading lies sets him up as a murder suspect. What is not believable is the script, which seems to overlook common sense. Cops that fall asleep while guarding a suspect, and worse yet handcuffing a suspect to a flimsy bench in the court house. After an intriguing set up, everything has less and less logic. The proverbial happy ending is totally unbelievable, as is the supposed motivation for the entire storyline. If you want to see a pretty good Steve Martin performance and can overlook Novocaine's many flaws, it is definitely watchable. - MERK

The DVD cover shows Steve Martin just as he was in the "Little Shop of Horrors" but there is nothing funny or original in this movie. Its just a no-laughs "action" movie. The movie is hard to believe as we watch Steve fall madly in love with a pathetic, homely drug addict and Steve makes one self-incriminating move after another. The tangled web he weaves is so contrived. And his moves are so unintelligent. Like it doesn't take any brains to get a dentist license. The ending is just bad-Hollywood and has little credibility. Better to watch commercials on TV. Laura Dern is somewhat watchable though. No wonder this movie was not advertised.

I seem to be part of the minority that liked this movie. Well, actually I just liked Elias Koteas and Kevin Bacon. The rest of the film did sort of frustrate me because it seemed like Steve Martin's problems were just so preventable, and he kept doing things to make the situation worse. But that aside, this film is worth renting just to see Elias Koteas sticking that camera thing down his pants. Hee hee. And Kevin Bacon is just laugh-out-loud funny; he's perfect for this part. I thought it was nice to see Steve Martin doing something not so family-friendly

If this movie had been labeled "A disturbing modern film noir," I would not have been expecting to be amused or entertained, and it would not have ruined my evening the way it did. True, I admired the direction and production values even as I loathed everything else and almost everyone in it. After about ten minutes I said, "I hope I stop hating this pretty soon," and after another twenty minutes I just quit trying to watch it. If I'd had any reason to suspect that I would be seeing a creepy violent Blood Simple or Red Rock West type of drama instead of a "comedy" of any kind it would have been a different matter entirely. I knew a Steve Martin movie was a crapshoot but this possibly interesting and obviously well made crime drama was appallingly mislabled. BEWARE!!!