Nurse Betty

For me, going to the movies is a lot like love. Before I married my beautiful and strict Mrs Filthy, I was a miserable fuck, angry at the world and everyone who'd done me wrong. Desperate for someone to love me, I'd go out with any ladies who wanted to; maybe a couple of harelips, a drunk girl from the bus, a club foot and that strung-out girl who lied about being a stripper because she didn't want my parents to know what she really did. Every relationship was a failure. The girls would lie about how much alcohol they could handle and invariably ended up vomiting in my car. One girl shit her pants and then blamed it on my dog. She honestly expected me to believe that my 80-pound mutt crawled down her pants and pinched a wet loaf. So, why did I keep going out on dates, including four with the pant-shitter, if there was no love? There's more to it than that these ladies let me fulfill my "naughty mechanic" fantasies.

The real reason is because - and don't you jerks fucking tell anyone this ­ I'm an optimist and a people-person. That's right, I love people, even the loudmouth jerks I want to punch in the face, and the assholes and pricks who do everything they can to keep Filthy down. I always give humanity another chance to return the love I dole out like a child-molester doles out Tootsie Rolls.

My attitute toward movies is that same, and that's why I endured this summer, the summer of constant and perineum-tearing ass-reamings by Hollywood's harelips, club-foots and junkies. I thought that if I didn't give up, if I kept handing over chunks of my Family Dollar wages, my love for movies would be requited.

Those grass-eating self-fuckers from L.A. pushed me to the limit of my kindness. And then, with "Nurse Betty," all was forgiven. Because it treated me right this week, Hollywood and I are in love.

Renée Zellweger is Betty, a simple waitress in Kansas married to Del Sizemore (Aaron Eckhard), a mullet-headed used car salesman who fucks his receptionist and isn't above turning criminal tricks for a buck. Eckhart has no love for Betty and it leaves her lost in her favorite soap opera, longing for a more fulfilling life. When one of Eckhart's deals goes sour, he is scalped and murdered by a hot-headed (Chris Rock) working with Morgan Freeman as bounty hunters for the mob.

Zellweger witnesses the murder, but is so shocked by it that it sends her into delusions. She blanks out the murder and believes she lives in the world of her soap "A Reason to Love." She thinks that the show's handsome doctor (Greg Kinnear) is meant for her. She leaves Kansas and heads for California to unite with her doctor.

Because she witnessed their murder, Rock and Freeman follow her with murderous intent. They catch up with Zellweger in Los Angeles, where she has tracked down Kinnear, entangled herself in his TV show, and unknowingly put herself in harm's way.

Neil LaBute and the writers John C. Richards and James Flanberg take what could have been a stupid amnesia story (like "The Long Kiss Goodnight") and turned it inside out. That's the second best thing about this movie. It's not about a woman being hunted by killers, it's about Zellweger's quest for something better. It's about her trying to enter the fantasy world that she held at arm's distance in Kansas. Before Eckhart's death, she knew "A Reason to Love" was just a soap opera and she only dreamed it could be her world. After his death, that barrier is gone and the soap's synthetic, glassy world is hers. It's a trick, but a funny one, and in the hands of these people a sympathetic one.

The best thing about this movie is that I realized two-thirds through it that I was giddy. Although "Nurse Betty" is only occasionally funny enough to make me shoot Pepsi out my nose, I enjoyed myself. It's harder for me to explain to you why than it was for me to explain to the Mrs. why my dick was caught in the floppy-disk drive (let's just say you can't believe everything you read in those "erotica" newsgroups). But, I think it's because the movie is new and fresh. Maybe I was giddy because, at the end of the long, dreadful summer, I watched likable, fully-developed characters in a plot that, as weird as it is, made sense. And nobody involved was slapping himself on the back for being so fucking clever.

The writers and director do a fan-fucking-tastic job of having Zellweger's character straddle the real and surreal. They mine her confusion with the soap actors and their characters for real laughs. And they manage to make the soap opera world be more attractive and better. Zellweger isn't pretty, really, but she's definitely got a blank face, with the big chipmunk cheeks and squinty eyes. Trust me, as someone who deals with an alarming number of people looking for discount pliers because they think the government has put transmitters in their teeth, Zellweger has the look of a confused delusional just right.

The other actors are uniformly excellent, especially Freeman and Rock. This is the first Chris Rock movie I have seen where the director didn't just stick him in to raise the movie's "bitchin'" quotient. They think he can make their movie cool, even if they don't know what to do with him. LaBute takes full advantage of Rock's self-righteous indignation, presenting us with a kid who is fucking pissed at the world and with good reason (I know how it feels, Mr. Rock). Freeman's slow-burn works because there's so much God-damn intelligence in his eyes. If I ran into that guy, you can bet your ass I wouldn't lie to him like I regularly do my parents and friends because he'd know it.

Greg Kinnear is okay. I don't think he's an actor, but he was naturally gifted with the look of a smarmy asshole, and those looks serve him well here.

"Nurse Betty" does stumble out of the block. Eckhart's character is such a lame white-trash cliché that his early death is welcomed. I invite all Hollywood directors and writers to a night at the Arvada Tavern so they will understand that real white-trash isn't so easily stereotyped; we're capable of much more kindness and cruelty than those rich fucks can imagine while swilling martinis in the Polo Lounge. Same with the sweet, fat, dumb small-town sheriff. Hollywood thinks all fat sheriff's are confused saints, but my personal experience is that they're total assholes. But the biggest fuck-up in casting was not giving Crispin Glover anything to do. Glover is a fucking lunatic, and the movie casts him as a regular guy, straitjacketed by a meager role.

But, "Nurse Betty," a four-finger movie, has filled me with love for movies and hope for the future. I know from experience that Hollywood is will quickly fall back into its old habits of taking advantage of me, beating me senseless, and ignoring my needs. I'm an optimist, though, and knowing that those assholes are capable of a movie like this gives me reason to go on and give them a too many more chances.