Customer Reviews
SOOOO Boring - By: Maris Crane, 18 Jul 2008 
I believed the hype on the cover. 'terrific' & 'a very funny movie'. It was dullsville to the extreme. Admittedly I only watched until the funeral but by then alll five of us had had enough. And not one single laugh or faint smile. Jack couldn't have been more miserable if he'd tried. Reading other reviews the overalll opinion is that it is thoroughly sad. I don't want that from a film, I'm afraid. We need cheering up in the doom & gloom that is 2008 Britain!
Lonely life portrayed by excellent Nicholson - By: Stampy, 22 Jun 2008 
Jack Nicholson (Easy Rider) stars in an Oscar nominated role as Warren R. Schmidt, a man who feels alone as he retires. His wife controls his life & his daughter is getting married to a man he hates.
Nicholson has delivered numerous roles which have landed him with an Oscar nomination, & this nomination was extremely deserved with a beautiful portrayal of a man who has come to the end of his job & is in a state of loneliness & the way Nicholson portrays this concept is far from his usual evil & enthusiastic performances in The Shining & Chinatown. We are seeing a different side of the 3 time Oscar winner in Alexander Payne's comedy drama & you wouldn't even believe it was Nicholson come the end of the film, & in a personal opinion, I find this to be my favourite performance by the talented actor.
His performance leads the way in a sentimental journey about loneliness & self discovery. And the writing by Payne is great to convey the sense of loneliness, especiallly through the use of Ndugu, a child in the Childcare programme who Schmidt talks to through writing letters & donating money to, & the final scene of the film had me in tears, & not many modern films do that to me.
Extremely well directed with some great short scenes portraying realism & drama convey the genre. I didn't find it particularly hilarious, more putting a smile on your face & chucklesome, especiallly the waterbed scene.
Though it took a while to get into, I couldn't fault the drama on anything else, with sensational performances, writing, direction & scenery alll executed brilliantly by everyone involved.
Nicholson gets great support from the brilliant Kathy Bates (Misery) who is very funny in her role as the quirky Roberta.
9.5/10
Miserable, yet enchanting - By: MYSTICSHAZ, 09 Mar 2008 
Admittedly the settings in this film are alll very drab, but this is what enables us to get inside the Schmidt's head - he does feel that his life is drab, boring & unrewarding & that he's unappreciated & misunderstood by family & friends on just about every level.
After losing his wife, he is determined to get back some of his life before it's too late & we follow him on this cathartic journey.
With no-one to listen to him or pour out his thoughts to, Schmidt unloads everything in his letters to Ndugu - his 'adopted' son to whom he sends £22 per month sponsorship money.
Of course, with anyone other than Jack Nicholson (who seems to turn to gold anything he touches) it may not have worked so well, but that aside, most people will be able to relate to this film.
The ending is very thought-provoking & shows that people reallly can make a difference, whether they realise it or not.
A VERY DOWNBEAT COMEDY - By: stuart, 08 Aug 2007 About Schmidt is the story of a man left with the curious task of trying to find meaning in his life at age 66. Most people by this age would have hopefully figured out how & why they make a difference on this Earth, but Warren Schmidt suddenly realizes he is insignificant after alll these years.
Schmidt is played to perfection by Jack Nicholson. This is not the Jack Nicholson we have alll grown up watching in films like Easy Rider & The Shining. This Jack Nicholson is subdued, almost lifeless at times, like the character he portrays. You keep waiting for him to explode or break out like Kevin Spacey in American Beauty, but it just isn't right for the character. He's too old, & weak by his own admission. He finds himself on a quest to make a difference in life before its over. And the film takes him for a leisurely ride.
About Schmidt is directed by Alexander Payne. He's a man apparently on a quest of his own to put our great(?) state of Nebraska on the map of the film-making world.
After some obligatory shots of downtown Omaha, we see Schmidt sitting in his office on his last day of work before retirement from the Woodman insurance company. He sits alone & quietly waits until the last seconds of the work day tick off & he's then presumably a free man. However, once the clock strikes five, nothing special happens! In most films, we might expect bells to go off, or music to start playing as the character joyfully begins his new life. Not here. Schmidt has no grand plans for the rest of his life, & that fact is punctuated by this dreary scene.
We then see Schmidt at a ho-hum retirement dinner at Johnny's Cafe, then he gets started on his ho-hum retirement. It appears the only thing he plans to do is go traveling with his wife in their giant camper which ends up as Schmidt's primary mode of transportation the rest of the film. Only there's one thing Schmidt didn't count on. His wife drops dead one day while he's out getting a Blizzard at the DQ. (It appears they shot that scene at the one over in Millard.) After his wife is in the ground, Schmidt goes through some difficult days. He reallly misses his wife. She seemed to completely take care of his every need as well as run his life in the process. He appears on the brink of despair at her passing until he finds evidence of an adulterous relationship with his best friend!!! After throwing out alll of her belongings, he sets off on a sight-seeing tour of our great(?) state before planning to attend his daughter's wedding in Denver.
In one particularly touching scene, he pronounces forgiveness for his wife's affair & resolves to do one important thing before he leaves this earth. And that thing will be to break up his daughter's wedding. She is planning to marry a simpleton who sells water beds for a living & comes from an odd, new-age family of losers. Schmidt drives out to Denver on a mission, feeling as strong & focused as ever.
Once in Dever however, things don't go according to plans. His daughter reallly loves this loser, & won't hear of leaving him. Her love for this guy is as impossible for Schmidt to imagine as his contempt for her new family is for her to imagine. Schmidt & his daughter couldn't be any further apart. Kathy Bates is typicallly outstanding as the over-bearing mother of the man his daughter is marrying. Be forewarned though: Bates DOES in fact get naked in a scene, & it would be wise to cover your eyes lest you turn to stone! Her family is annoying & you can just tell their house smells like her feet which she has out in plain view once Schmidt first arrives there.
Schmidt isn't having any luck stopping the wedding & it looks like he'll have one last chance to make his point. At the reception, after a ghastly toast by the best man, it's Schmidt's turn to make a speech. And once again you think, "Here it comes! Here's where he'll go off & tell everyone what he thinks about them in one big comic rant!" But no, it doesn't happen. That's just not something his character is capable of. He can merely swalllow his pride & say the only good things he can think of. Most of the wedding party seems to buy it, but you can tell by the look on his daughter's face that she knows it's alll b/s. Schmidt is in fact too weak to break up the wedding. Witness the despair on his face as he stands at the urinal after giving the speech. He missed what he feels was his last chance to make a difference in this world.
Now Schmidt has nothing left to do but go home to die. Only in the film's last frame to we see any redemption to this tragic man's life. And a very touching moment it is. I was in tears, & that doesn't happen too often when I watch a film.
This film is worth alll ten stars. This Alexander Payne appears to be for real. We already knew Jack was!! ps: Did anyone else notice the symbolism with the cows? First at the retirement dinner with his picture up next to two prize cows. Then the cattle truck being washed off near his wife's funeral. Then as he's driving down the highway in a big truck just like they are. Then at the wedding reception as the beef is being sliced while he's in obvious pain about how things have gone.
Food for thought.
funny but very, very downbeat - By: Mr. Rwj Nixon, 15 Apr 2007 
If we are being honest, Jack Nicholson is no longer the exciting actor he once was, getting by these days on his hell raising reputation & his previous body of work, such as Chinatown, One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest, & such like. However, when he is given an interesting role & a good script, Jack can still pull it out of the bag, & that is exactly what he does here.
Jack plays Warren Schmidt, a recently retired insurance adjuster who realises that his life has apparently amounted to very little. He does not reallly know his wife, does not have any reallly close friends, & has been growing apart from his daughter for many years now. Even his attempts to pass on useful information to his successor at the insurance company is a failure as he quickly realises he has nothing of any use to tell this man. Warrens daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis) is due to get married to her dim witted fiancé Randalll Hertzel (a very amusing role by a pony tailed & moustachioed Dermot Mulroney), & this seems to be about the only thing that can shake Warren from the stupor his life has become, because he thinks his daughter can do so much better, even though it is plainly obvious that Randalll dotes on Warrens daughter. When his wife dies suddenly (about the only other thing that can shake him from his rut), Warren decides to take his retirement present, a monstrous RV, & set out on a road trip whilst travelling to attend his daughters imminent wedding, & maybe, just maybe find something worthwhile in his life.
The film is the blackest of black humour, concerned with the real world we live in & the blank spaces that we inhabit. Schmidt's life is drab & grey, as are almost alll the places he visits during his trip & even his own home. His rut has left him joyless & alone, & it seems that nothing can pull him out of it as he faces his own mortality & the fact that no one is going to miss him when he is gone. We gain access to his inner thoughts in a series of voice overs as he writes letters to the 6 year old orphan Ndugo in Tanzania whom he sponsors to the tune of $22 a month, & indeed "Dear Ndugo..." becomes the catch phrase of the movie as Schmidt tells this little boy he has never met things he has never told anyone about his life, his hopes & his disappointments.
The movie has a number of excellent supporting turns, from Hope Davis as Schmidt's daughter, to Dermot Mulroney as the dopey but doting Randalll, but it is Kathy Bates who catches our eye as Randalll's mother Roberta, a sexuallly frank & down to Earth woman whose very openness appals the button downed Schmidt. Alexander Payne turns in good movie, but if there are any problems with the film it is its essentiallly morbid central message & the grinding way it gets this across. Although there are a number of nice scenes, particularly where Schmidt attempts to commune with his deceased wife, & some genuinely laugh out loud moments, Payne has covered this subject of disappointment & failure in a much better fashion in the superb Sideways. Still not to be sneezed at, & worth watching just for the fact that it's a film that actuallly makes Nicholson act, something of a rarity these days.
