The Story
Betty Sizemore (Renee Zellweger) is a waitress addicted to a soap opera. She is a naive ingenue married to Del (Aaron Eckhart), a used car salesman hocking a Le Sabre as his top quality item. Del is a nasty, probably abusive cheat, who has become involved with the wrong people, Charlie and Wesley, and the wrong product, drugs (what kind of drug is not important, all that matters is that it can be neatly wrapped in block form and stored in the trunk of the Le Sabre Betty escapes in). Needless to say, Charlie and Wesley come looking for the drugs and Del gets the worst of it while his impressionable wife Betty witnesses the whole thing. Del's sloppy murder sets in motion a shock induced trip from Kansas to California in which Betty searches for a character from her favorite soap, not the actor, mind you, but the actual character.

The Review
Liked it better than "Thelma and Louise," one of the best road pictures in recent memory. "Nurse Betty" is tight and edgy with humor and dark moments. Not quite the movie that Jonathan Demme's "Something Wild" became, but "Nurse Betty" has a payoff that maintains solid interest throughout.

      The story depends heavily on the actors who deliver their lines well. Freeman's Charlie is the heart of the movie. Rock's Wesley is his perfect twisted comic foil (although not the typical "funny" Rock but the alternate universe version). Zellweger's Betty is tweaked so much that you struggle to laugh because she is so sweet that you feel sorry for her. The rest of the cast is cool, complete with this weirdo guy, Crispin Glover of "Back to the Future" fame, who you might remember once almost kicked Letterman in head and got kicked off the show in the process. Such actors like Pruit Taylor Vince (funny, this dude has been showing up a lot lately, like in the gruesomely bloody "The Cell") give us off kilter swinging the balance of the whole flick.

      "Betty" benefits greatly by the direction of Neil LeBute, who is capable of breaking the rated "R" barrier without nudity, vulgar sex, or even the regular use of a certain "no no" four letter word. LeBute's "In the Company of Men" was tough and the kind of bitter pill many find hard to swallow. LeBute's follow up film "My Friends and Neighbors" explored subjects (mainly sexual ones) that we all find embarrassing. Both films were rated "R" if for no other reason but for emotional abuse demonstrated perfectly by the shallow characters that populate LeBute's films and our world. Perhaps, certain words are worse than sticks and stones. If such words exist, LeBute seems to find them and use them to evoke emotions capable of ruining a life the same way as any physical wound.

      "Nurse Betty" is not too dark, however, and has a sweeter nature than the typical LeBute emotional coaster ride. Maybe its ultimate lack of complete brutality is the reason why it is so enjoyable. Freeman and Rock are enough to make it worth seeing and Zellweger's twisted cutie both warms the heart and makes you uncomfortable.

      There is a scene in "Nurse Betty" I liken to a critical scene in "Out of Sight." Those of you who have seen "Out of Sight" will remember the odd climatic moment when Jack (George "I have never been better" Clooney) is caught in the gun sights of Karen (Jennifer Lopez) and you really believe she is going to pull the trigger and off him right there, because, after all that is what she is supposed to do. What happens next is what "Nurse Betty" is all about. It is why "Nurse Betty" is a superior film and not just a good one.

Jonathan W. Hickman, 2000