Great Film overall

As Good As It Gets

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Chris Menges, who in 1992 directed the very fine, unusual drama "CrissCross", takes on another curious, strangely moving film with "Second Best". William Hurt plays a single, middle-aged postman in a Welsh village who wants to adopt a boy. We learn why, and we also learn why the young boy who's been selected has such a mercurial nature, but these themes (childhood-vs.-adulthood, rebellious-vs.-being loved), however topical, have been well-traveled. It is Hurt's performance which is something new. The way he moves his head quickly to avert an emotion or a confusion, the way he smiles when surprised...the man is, of course, an actor, but he's not actorly; he's not a beguiling trickster, he is an actor of deeply human emotions. When he loses his temper at the kid, it's not unusual to find him saying the next morning that he's willing to continue on this path. It's a refreshing piece of work by Hurt, who I feel has been erratic since finding major stardom on the screen. The youngster, Chris Cleary Miles, is kept low-keyed (he's very natural), while John Hurt is funny and fine in a brief supporting role. Alan Cumming looks a little theatrical and out-of-place as an adoption caseworker (at first I feared there would be a dreadful sub-plot involving Cumming as the villain of the piece). A fine film, though Menges does fiddle with a few camera tricks to convey emotions not in the script. It turns out these artistic flourishes were not necessary, as the main character and his desire to be a good, decent father manage to express a lot more. *** out of ****

This is a moving, touching film. For me a little bit frightening too. In the real world there are some people, who behave like Holt. (Unimportant, but funny that the word "Holt" means Dead in Hungarian which is my first language.) This movie is like a therapy, an advice for unhappy, lonely people. A believable film is a great pleasure nowadays, but if you meet your own life face-to-face in a script, well... it's pretty scary. If you pay attention good enough, it changes your life! Thank God for this film!

The story is about a kind man in his forties that never dated, drank or did drugs. He ended up in a kind of boring everyday life in a 5000 population town and felt something was missing, perhaps a child would do the trick? This movie is a cute story about a man who adopts a small boy with certain behavioral problems.

I've read the other reviews posted here and concur with all of them. The film triumphs in its realistic depiction of two broken hearts, Jamie's and Graham's. I think, in order to appreciate the story, one must have somehow experienced the psychic shock of childhood abandonment, either emotionally or by outright physical abandonment. The pleasure of watching this film, aside from the acting and cinematography, is having the sense that it will work out okay. At the very end, when Jamie walks briskly to catch up with Graham, slips his hand into the grownup's hand, and then walks much more slowly, one can see in their stride together the fulfillment each has received. I rewound the film at that point to see that scene again.