Photo: Jack Nicholson as Warren Schmidt in Alexander Payne's About Schmidt
Alexander Payne's About Schmidt purports to be a comedy about "risk assessment." When his wife of 42 years, Helen (June Squibb), keels over next to the vacuum cleaner, Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) takes his Winnebago for a spin across the Midwest. A Childreach commercial narrated by Angela Lansbury provokes Schmidt to donate $22 a month to a starving African boy named Ndugu, and Schmidt's letters to the boy are the director's cheap excuse for a commentary track, but his protagonist's self-centered voiceover also functions as a running gag. With every mention of "Dear Ndugu," an otherwise ingratiating Nicholson invites laughter from the audience and succeeds in making light of the child's predicament. If Payne's snide sense of humor went hand-in-hand with Election's political context, here it condescends to the Midwest pastoral. When he looks out the window at a man throwing out his garbage, it's unsurprising that the man is overweight, half-dressed, and in obvious need of a shower. The whole of the film is pieced together from such tacky disdain.
Alexander Payne's About Schmidt purports to be a comedy about "risk assessment." When his wife of 42 years, Helen (June Squibb), keels over next to the vacuum cleaner, Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) takes his Winnebago for a spin across the Midwest. A Childreach commercial narrated by Angela Lansbury provokes Schmidt to donate $22 a month to a starving African boy named Ndugu, and Schmidt's letters to the boy are the director's cheap excuse for a commentary track, but his protagonist's self-centered voiceover also functions as a running gag. With every mention of "Dear Ndugu," an otherwise ingratiating Nicholson invites laughter from the audience and succeeds in making light of the child's predicament. If Payne's snide sense of humor went hand-in-hand with Election's political context, here it condescends to the Midwest pastoral. When he looks out the window at a man throwing out his garbage, it's unsurprising that the man is overweight, half-dressed, and in obvious need of a shower. The whole of the film is pieced together from such tacky disdain.
