It’s a brilliant, honest performance by Nicholson, but the film is an agonizing bore except when the fantastic Kathy Bates turns up. Bravado Kathy!

Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) is retiring from his job at an Omaha insurance company, but he has absolutely nothing to do. His wife of 42 years, Helen (June Squibb, shockingly age-appropriate for the role), is old, heavyset, and an efficient homemaker. Schmidt decides to become a foster parent to a Nigerian child and begins writing him highly personal letters along with his monthly check. Though Schmidt expresses shock about waking up next to an old lady every day (whose every gesture annoys him), when she suddenly drops dead, he’s completely lost. He goes to pieces.

His daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis) returns home for the funeral with her fiancée Randall (Dermot Mulroney), a meek waterbed salesmen. While Schmidt reminisces about his fondness for his daughter, she is distant and unconcerned about her father’s future. Schmidt doesn’t want sour Jeannie to marry a loser like Randall. Apparently, Jeannie is harboring a lot of anger towards Schmidt and, in a perfectly written scene between father and daughter, is furious he brought her mother the cheapest coffin.

After weeks of messing up the house, Schmidt decides to christen his newly-brought 35-foot Winnebago by going to Denver to spend time with Jeannie. Along the way, Jeannie tells him not to come until the wedding so he takes the RV on a very boring (for us) sightseeing tour. Finally in Denver he meets Randall’s parents, Roberta (Kathy Bates) and Larry (Howard Hesemann). Roberta gets us ready for what is surely the wildest nude scene ever, by announcing to Schmidt that her still-pronounced energetic sex drive caused her two divorces. After nursing Schmidt from the pain of a night’s sleep in a rocky waterbed, Roberta suggests he spend some time in her hot tub.

She wouldn’t, would she? The audience knows what it should expect. But will it happen? Yes, Roberta drops that robe, walks to the hot tub and climbs in. Unabashedly naked from the waist up, she cheerfully tells Schmidt she’s going to enjoy having a widower around for all the holiday vacations. Nicholson’s reaction is priceless.

However, it takes a long, dreary RV ride to get to this scene.

The film draws so much pathos out of Schmidt’s loss that everyone I talked to afterwards felt guilty about neglecting someone they knew who had lost a loved one. Nicholson’s performance is relentlessly raw, Davis is always perfect in dour roles, and the gorgeous Mulroney is a surprise—what fun he must have had playing a balding, mullet-haired, dimwitted, beloved son of an ex-hippie. Nicholson’s performance aside, the story maunders around at a slow pace, fruitlessly looking for something to engage Schmidt in. It ends rather unsatisfactorily at Jeanne’s wedding with Schmidt not expressing his true feelings.

Screenwriters Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor (co-writers of the fabulous ELECTION) don’t give Schmidt much to do and the RV campgrounds scene—Schmidt makes an awkward pass at an understanding woman—seems wrong. As a director, Payne has the ability to create an underlying emotional rhythm that is unsettling, yet the writers weigh down Schmidt with overwhelming sadness and then merrily leave him there.

Victoria Alexander can be contacted by visiting www.FilmsInReview.com or, directly, at masauu@aol.com.