癲狂院 Vixen Owl Cigar..。o○

From Kansas to LA, and Oz in Between..


A Dark & Funny Treat with a Fantastic Cast !!!!
The lives we lead are usually not the lives we wish we led.
In a world so filled with cruelty and disillusion, we search daily for an escape from our own realities.. Some of us turn to religion, some to sports, others to drugs.. And some - whether they admit it or not - turn to soap operas.. Such is the case with Betty in Neil Labute's disarmingly subversive comedy, Nurse Betty.. Betty Sizemore, played to perfection by a winningly naive Renee Zellweger, is truly obsessed with her favorite soap opera, "A Reason to Love", and more specifically with one of its lead characters, Dr. David Ravell (Greg Kinnear in a subtle, effective performance)....

It becomes quickly apparent that the nature of her obsession doesn't lie in the quality of the television show - it is no better or no worse than a thousand other soap operas that have aired throughout the years, hackneyed dialogue and predictably "crazy" plots firmly in place.
Rather, it seems that Betty, an average woman working an average job in an average place - with a far below average husband - has turned towards the show to escape the banality in which she lives.
Echoing one of Dr. Ravell's own lines from the show, Betty believes that "somewhere out there, there is something special for me ."

Thus, after witnessing the horrific scalping and subsequent murder of her husband by a pair of hit men (Chris Rock and Morgan Freeman ) , Betty slips easily and safely into a fantasy world of her own, deciding rather matter-of-factly to leave her husband (his death not having registered in her reality) and set out to find the true, abandoned of her life, Dr. Ravell.
The fact that the character is entirely fictional - and that she has no interest in the actor who plays the character - doesn't seem to concern her either.
She is happily oblivious to the reality of real life.

【Morgan Freeman】Nurse Betty【Renee Zellweger】
Zellweger Brings "Betty" To Life.

Betty Sizemore (Renee Zellweger ) is a waitress in a diner in Fair Oaks, Kansas, who loves watching her favorite soap, A Reason to Love.
Her husband, Del (Aaron Eckhardt ), is a chauvinistic used car salesman (in attitude, not unlike other characters he's played).
It turns out that Del has something that doesn't belong to him and Charlie (Morgan Freeman ) and Wesley (Chris Rock ), two hitmen, are sent to retrieve it.
The incident that follows throws Betty completely into a fantasy world where she believes that she was once engaged to the main character in A Reason to Love, Dr. Dave Ravell (Greg Kinnear ).
She drives to LA in la-la land to find him and resume their relationship.

On the way she stops at a bar and shares life stories with the bartender.
Betty tells her she's heading to Los Angeles to meet her old fiance who is a surgeon at Loma Vista (the fictitious hospital on A Reason to Love ).
It's wonderful to see the expressions on the bartender's face as she tries to figure out if Betty's serious or not.
When the hitmen discover that the object of their mission is not there in Kansas, and that Del's wife, Betty, has skipped town they suspect she has it and track her down.

I remember reading about "Nurse Betty " months ago, about who the director was, the other films he had done, and thinking how much I really wanted to see it.
But by the time it finally came out I had forgotten who the director was and all I remembered was that I wanted to see it, so I went in completely naive and unprejudiced.
There are those rare times that I have gone to see a movie knowing nothing about it and come away deeply affected (Dangerous Beauty, The Piano, Primary Colors, Summer of Sam, to name a few ).
It's gone the other way too, where the movie turned out to be pure tripe.

But Nurse Betty...
I had no idea it was made by the same guy that did In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors.. I'm sure it would have changed my perception.. In the Company of Men made me want to take a pipe cleaner and scrub out my brain; it was vile and disturbing...and amazing and fascinating.....

When I see a movie I just want to be told a story, I want to buy the whole thing.
When I take my seat there is no pessimistic barrier in place, only child-like hope and anticipation.
I had stopped reading my book and was so caught up in the story that my face was mimicking the expressions of Lumiere and Cogsworth.
I the movie, I can't help it.
If the filmmakers have done their job, I get completely drawn into the story.
In Nurse Betty, when she finally meets Dr. Ravell, the interplay between the characters was magic to me.
I want to see it again for that scene, and for the one in the Arizona bar.

There were only a few times where the magic wore off and I found myself wondering, "Would Charlie really be saying that? "
I found Charlie and Wesley's interactions uncharacteristic at times, but by the end it all made sense.
It turned out to be one of the warmer aspects of the film, how Charlie put this last hit in perspective with the rest of his life.

Renee showed unbelievable range and talent.
When she checked out of reality she was anything but vacuous; her fantasy world was real.
It was heartbreaking to see it finally crumble around her, it gave me goose bumps.
If she's not nominated for an Oscar, I'll be surprised.

The writing was brilliant, the story original, the dialog sharp.
This is a finely crafted film, an example of how the collaborative process can near perfection.
Coming off a summer movie season that is more lackluster than blockbuster, Nurse Betty is a refreshing romp down an Oz-bricked road (Wizard references abound, including the gingham-checked dress Betty wears at the diner and the fact that she's helped by several people on her quest ).
It's always clever, often witty and has more than a few surprises up its sleeve.
Great performances are turned in all around, especially from Zelleweger, Kinnear, and Freeman in truly difficult roles.
Had either of them hit a false note in their characterizations, the film would have been a sure-fire disappointment.
It is a credit to their skill - and that of director Neil LaBute's - that the film never falls flat, never feels anything less than fresh.
For LaBute, this film marked a massive change in direction from his previous harsh "comedies ", In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors.
Working for the first time from a script he didn't write, and indeed, directing a true comedy for the first time, LaBute shows he definitely has the chops to make it as an independent voice working within Hollywood.


Thanks to Zellweger, Nurse Betty is the feel-good movie of the season.. She knows how to cure an ill box office season....