As Good As It Gets

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Watched this as a Netflix streaming movie. Filmed in the Seychelles.It starts in London where an middle-aged man, nearing 50, with teenage sons at home, decides that he wants to spend a year on a tropical island with a younger women. There is a bit of mumbling in the dialog so he may have said and I missed it, but I never found out what he was going to do with his sons during this time.So he places an ad for a "wife" and is in the process of meeting the respondents one by one, until he meets Lucy and she seems to be just right. So he cancels the other interviews, he and Lucy start spending time together, sleeping together, and probably planning the details of their trip although it isn't obvious that they do so.When ready, they set off and once in Australia find that they must be married to cavort alone on the island, and somehow Lucy had decided she wanted to remain single, but they marry to avoid canceling.As we watch this story it seems that planning was not done very well. They don't really know what they will do with their time, and they don't seem particularly prepared for food, shelter, or invariable medical needs. Plus, she decides, once they are on the island alone, she spends most of her time nude but loses all her interest in sex, which creates its own new set of problems.Veteran actor Oliver Reed is the man, Gerald Kingsland. Amanda Donohoe as the woman Lucy Irvine, was about 23 and very lovely.While the movie is interesting from a character study, and just the idea of two relative strangers spending a year alone together on a small island with no conveniences, it doesn't flow very well and when it is all over doesn't particularly make sense. Except, perhaps, to show that even if you go half-way around the world, to an island, you still end up eventually doing and enjoying what you did back home. He stayed in Australia, she flew away, probably back to London.

The is one thing I remember this film for more than the story or even the two lead stars (which I knew too), and that is the nudity! Basically Gerald Kingsland (Oliver Reed) advertises in a London newspaper for a female companion to spend a year with him on a desert island, and he gets Lucy Irvine (Amanda Donohoe). A couple of meetings later, they are on their way, and most of the time, as I said, roaming around naked as they indulge in what the island has to offer, which is not much. It soon becomes clear it is not as idyllic as they would have thought, with both the island and their arguments creating tension, but they have to bare with it the full year. Also starring Georgina Hale as Sister Saint Margaret, Frances Barber as Sister Saint Winifred, Tony Rickards as Jason, Len Peihopa as Ronald, Todd Rippon as Rod, Virginia Hey as Janice, John Sessions as Man in Pub, Stephen Jenn as Shop Manager, Sorrell Johnson as Lara, Paul Reynolds as Mike Kingsland and Sean Hamilton as Geoffrey Kingsland. This is a very odd film for director Nicholas Roeg (Walkabout, Don't Look Now, The Witched) to choose, and both Reed and Donohoe aren't very suitable, there isn't much to say about this film to persuade you to watch it, well, maybe seeing Donohoe naked, but that's it. Oliver Reed was number 78 on The 100 Greatest Movie Stars, and he was number 26 on The 50 Greatest British Actors. Adequate!

Nick Roeg did something which I am sure is way above most viewers' heads. A man decides to spend a year away from the madding crowd (who doesn't want to?) and takes a woman with him. So far, so good. But the man is so far removed from reality that he does not prepare properly, ignores warnings (they do not come at him as his normal world would deliver them: you should not, danger, etc. - friendly advice he sloughs off as inferior) and nearly starves to death. BUT, here's the interesting part, in his own mind he sees it all as idyllic and wants to continue. He creates his own fantasy i his head and lives there, while in truth he and the woman are starving to death. Anorexia anyone? If you know someone who believes in their own reality, make them watch this movie as psychotherapy. Will they survive? Watch and find out.

After Walkabout this is Nic Roeg's most beautiful film. Stunning photography by Harvey Harrison complements the story of two loners who set out to live on a deserted Pacific island for a whole year. Oliver Reed and Amanda Donohoe are both excellent as the two frustrated Britons who don't exactly enjoy their year together.