About Schmidt

Director: Alexander Payne Alexander Payne

Overview

Jack Nicholson plays retiring insurance actuary Warren Schmidt in Alexander Payne's About Schmidt. Schmidt has settled into a dormant life. He has an unfulfilling marriage to Helen (June Squibb), and conspires to spend as much time away from her as possible. Schmidt's daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis) is engaged to Randall Hertzel (Dermot Mulroney), a man Schmidt believes is entirely unworthy of his daughter. When Helen unexpectedly dies, Warren is adrift until he discovers old love letters sent to his wife from his best friend. This inspires Warren to make a valiant effort to stop his daughter's wedding. His plans start to go awry when he meets Randall's extroverted mother, Roberta (Kathy Bates). About Schmidt was screened at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival where many were surprised that Nicholson did not take home the Best Actor award.

Product Details

Release Date:	02/03/2015
UPC:	0883929374915
Original Release:	2002
Rating:	R
Source:	New Line Home Video
Time:	2:05:00
Sales rank:	21,256

Special Features

9 deleted scenes; "Woodmen Tower Sequences" short films; Theatrical trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Jack Nicholson	Warren Schmidt
Hope Davis	Jeannie
Dermot Mulroney	Randall Hertzel
Kathy Bates	Roberta Hertzel
Len Cariou	Ray
Howard Hesseman	Larry
June Squibb	Helen Schmidt
Cheryl Hamada	Saundra

Technical Credits

Alexander Payne

Jim Taylor

Alexander Payne	Director,Screenwriter
Bill Badalato	Executive Producer
Lisa Beach	Casting
Michael Besman	Producer
Wendy Chuck	Costumes/Costume Designer
Frank Gaeta	Set Decoration/Design
Harry Gittes	Producer
James Glennon	Cinematographer
Rachel Horovitz	Executive Producer
John Jackson	Casting
Sarah Katzman	Casting
Rolfe Kent	Score Composer
George Parra	Asst. Director
Art Rochester	Sound/Sound Designer
Jane Ann Stewart	Production Designer
Jim Taylor	Screenwriter
Kevin Tent	Editor

Editorial Reviews

The tepidity of the American Dream leads to a less-than-epic journey of the soul in About Schmidt, a curiously dry satire of middle-class values from director Alexander Payne (Election). Jack Nicholson stars as the eponymous hero, whose retirement from a meaningless white-collar job, followed quickly by his wife's death, prompts him to hit the road in a Winnebago, in an ersatz odyssey of self-discovery. The film’s great strength is its tone, which hinges on Schmidt's role as a classic unreliable narrator. The letters he pens to a third-world orphan he's decided to sponsor supply deliciously ironic voice-over narration. The fact is, Schmidt's road trip is ultimately as uninspiring as his life, and he remains unable to conjure up any real emotion after decades of quiet despair and delusions of contentment. It's a subtle and effective approach that plays against the strip-mall satire, resulting in a strangely haunting atmosphere throughout. Strong supporting performances anchor the film, including Hope Davis as Schmidt's mousy daughter, Dermot Mulroney as her mullet-sporting fiancé, and Kathy Bates as his uninhibited mother. But About Schmidt is Nicholson's show, and it’s a relief to see the actor finally shed his romantic leading man persona to play an ordinary old man. The result is a striking film that is neither cruelly satirical nor overtly sentimental, one that is more interested in asking the big questions than supplying the answers.

Barnes & Noble - Gregory Baird

About Schmidt is another pitch-black comedy from director Alexander Payne and co-screenwriter Jim Taylor, the team responsible for Citizen Ruth and Election. While About Schmidt features Jack Nicholson's most impressively controlled performance in many years, the film's mix of bleakness and cheap laughs has to be seen as a disappointment after the sharp satire and moral complexity of Election. The film starts well, with Nicholson bringing a bitter retiree into sharp focus. His contempt for his chipper wife, Helen (June Squibb), and his resentment at being pushed out of his job simmer under the surface until he begins writing to a Tanzanian orphan named Ndugu, whom he "sponsors" after seeing a grim charity infomercial. It's a conceit that seems too clever, but it works surprisingly well, allowing the audience to see, in Schmidt's straightforward ramblings ("Who is this old woman who lives in my house?"), another layer of mendacity in how he sees himself. We can see what an unreliable narrator he is, though Payne sometimes belabors the point, as when Schmidt is writing about using a road trip as an opportunity to enjoy the time he has left on earth, as a bird dropping splatters across his windshield. Every relationship in Schmidt's life is tinged with self-delusion. His idealized view of his daughter, Jeannie (a sharp turn by Hope Davis), threatens to destroy their shaky relationship when he decides to interfere with her plans to marry a dorky waterbed salesman, Randall (Dermot Mulroney). Randall and his clan are portrayed as buffoons, mostly, but Kathy Bates, in a bold performance, lends some dignity to Randall's crudely free-spirited mother. The film's condescending attitude toward these characters produces some easy laughs at their expense, but that doesn't alleviate the unrelenting grimness of Payne's mildly disappointing comedy.

All Movie Guide - Josh Ralske

An impressively bleak comedy with intimations of social satire. J. Hoberman

Village Voice

Lays out an expansive, impressively even-handed vision of life in contemporary Middle America. Stephen Holden

New York Times

1/2
That Jack Nicholson makes this man so watchable is a tribute not only to his craft, but to his legend.

Chicago Sun-Times - Roger Ebert

A brutally dry satire of Middle American numbness.

Boston Globe - Ty Burr

Perfectly pitched between comedy and tragedy, hope and despair, About Schmidt instead comes far closer than many movies to expressing the way many of us live -- someplace between consuming self-absorption and insistently demanding otherness. Manohla Dargis

Los Angeles Times