Warren writes letters to Ndugu, in which he’s instructed to open up and tell the boy about himself and his life. He ends up opening his soul to Ndugu, telling the unsuspecting lad all the thoughts, anger, and desires that he keeps from his friends and family and presumably himself. The letters (heard by the audience in voice-overs) are outrageously funny for many reasons, but thanks to Nicholson’s understated performance and the great writing and direction of Alexander Payne, the letters are also sincere and heartfelt and this is true about the entire movie.

About Schmidt deftly juggles sincerity and emotional honesty with (sometimes) outrageous humor, and it never feels forced or condescending. About Schmidt is a funny, touching movie that unfolds like a good book and it features Nicholson as we’ve never seen him before on-screen, and to his credit he’s totally believable.

There has been much advance press about Nicholson’s great performance, but I hope that doesn’t create expectations of Nicholson’s work in The Shining, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, or As Good As It Gets. What’s great about Nicholson in About Schmidt is how subtle it is, how believable he is as a 66
year-old retired, middle-class Midwesterner. It is a shock to see him with a bad comb-over, overweight, and looking every bit like an average 66 year-old man. It is an even bigger shock to see him on-screen with a woman who is his age and looks it. While this doesn’t seem like the stuff of great performances, it is because in the end we care about Warren and what happens to him and his family.

About Schmidt begins on the last day of work for Warren as he heads into the scary realm of retirement. It is a road movie about self-discovery as Warren deals with tragedy and tries to repair his relationship with his only daughter (Hope Davis), who is planning a wedding to a nice but clueless mullet-wearing
waterbed salesman (a hilarious and totally unrecognizable Dermont Mulroney). By the time he arrives in Denver on the eve of his daughter’s wedding, he has gone through a lot of funny experiences but nothing has prepared for dealing with his future son-in-law’s family (an angry, dysfunctional clan headed by the
wonderful Kathy Bates).

That’s the movie in a nutshell: Real people dealing with real-life life issues. It may sound boring but it’s not at all. About Schmidt feels deceptively like a small movie; about one man and his life and dreams but it is a much larger movie; a movie about personal growth and discovery. The fact that it feels so small and intimate is a credit to the cast (especially Nicholson) and it’s talented director/writer. About Schmidt moves at a leisurely pace, a bold gambit in today’s over-caffeineated movie universe, but if you’re patient with it you will find yourself in the midst of a wonderfully funny, poignant comedy that’s as good as movies get.