Mullets Ahoy (Nurse Betty (DVD))

Member Name: Katz1

Product:	Nurse Betty (DVD)
Date:	16/07/01 (34 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great comedy,, great acting,, not your usual road movie

Disadvantages: Some violence, don't watch if you have a weak stomach

I must admit, when I first saw the film title Nurse Betty and the picture on the front of the video cassette box, I had my doubts. I couldn’t quite imagine what kind of a film it was going to be – definitely a comedy, but I thought perhaps slapstick humour – strange hospital comedy à la Carry On, doctors and nurses running around, waving dangerous equipment in the air, lots of ooh matrons... sorry, got carried away, but you get the picture.

After seeing the trailers I then thought it was going to be about a woman who was crazy and so totally obsessed with her soap hero star that she had no concept of the difference between real life and the TV (a bit like Brooke Shields’ obsessed fan character in Friends), a prospect I also didn’t find especially appealing (although to some extent this is what the film is about). However, a friend recommended it to me, I gave it the benefit of the doubt, and was pleasantly surprised.

Nurse Betty is a refreshing, black comedy that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Be warned, however, that there are some quite brutal scenes of violence, which are not for the faint-hearted! The film juxtaposes small-town life in America with the fast-paced America of the big/small screen and Hollywood. We are first introduced to the small-town Betty, settled and happy in her mundane existence as a waitress. She has a cretin of a husband (a fact she seems blissfully unaware of) and her greatest talent is to pour coffee whilst staring fixedly at her favourite daytime hospital soap opera, “A Reason to Love”. After witnessing a horrific event, however, this Kansas yokel thrusts herself into a big-city world of drama and confusion, a world where she can walk into a job as a nurse without references, save lives, live in a cool apartment with a man-crazy flatmate, and get the man of her dreams (or so she thinks).

Renee Zellweger was the perfect choice for this slightly dippy, doe-e
yed innocent. I hadn’t liked her in Jerry McGuire due to the fact she always seemed to be on the verge of tears, but in this film, her look was perfect (even down to the blonde, hair-sprayed flicked fringe – the biggest I’ve seen since the eighties).

Morgan Freeman, who I’ve yet to see in a poor film, plays his ‘baddy’ character with sensitivity and brilliant comic timing (his slow-dancing scene at Grand Canyon is a classic) and Chris Rock as his angry young sidekick was an inspired casting. The two complement each other very well and do not lapse into what could potentially have been ridiculous stereotypes.

Greg Kinnear (As Good As It Gets), is brilliant as the arrogant, egotistical actor whose soap character, Dr. Ravel, Betty is obsessed with.

Aaron Eckhart, the actor playing her slimeball husband, Del, also takes a good role – so does his Mullet hairdon’t , although whether it will lead to better roles for him in the future is anybody’s guess.

This is a great film with many twists and turns along the way. Part road movie, part action comedy, and part farce - it is well worth renting out from your local video shop.

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