In Alexander Payne’s wickedly mordant satire, newly-retired Warren Schmidt is forced to acknowledge the sheer empty horror of a wasted life that has left him with a ghastly marriage to someone he no longer recognises as the woman he fell in love with, a neurotic daughter who’s about to marry an hilariously useless water bed salesman and a past he can’t remember because in all the years now behind him he did little of merit and nothing of note.
Dysfunctional families are currently all the rage, but About Schmidt has a dark individuality and coruscating comic edge that makes it uniquely compelling. As the titular Schmidt, Jack Nicholson is by turns baffled, angry, lost, fearful and, finally, heartbreaking. Among the excellent supporting cast: Hope Davis as Schmidt’s daughter, Dermot Mulroney as her gormless boyfriend and the great Kathy Bates as his outrageously doting hippie mother.