Los Angeles. Matt is still a struggling actor going to auditions just to get rejected every time. He goes to pick up his 6-year old daughter Jeannie from his ex-wife, and has to take care of her. Film producer Burke allows Matt to have a screen test, but after it fails, Burke hires him as his driver. Matt starts a relationship with Burke's script reader Cathy. Inadvertently, Jeannie gets cast in a sitcom, and Matt gives her acting advice, thereby strengthening their father-daughter relationship.
Compared to the three excellent films he directed in the 20th century ("Terms of Endearment", "Broadcast News", "As Good as It Gets"), it seems the ambitions of screenwriter and director James L. Brooks dropped a bit in his 3rd film "I'll Do Anything", but he still has enough skills to create characters whose likeability alone is enough to become a virtue on its own. Nick Nolte has no sense for a comic timing, which inhibits the comedy side of the storyline, and the relationship between Matt and his 6-year daughter Jeannie is not that interesting, but the tantalizing satirical segment revolving around the Hollywood system works, whereas outbursts of Brooks' pure genius manifest occasionally in some fantastic dialogues. For instance, in one scene Matt is talking with his ex-wife on the phone, who is shouting at him, until he snaps: "I can scream too, you know!" When Matt finally goes to pick up his daughter after not seeing her for two years, his ex-wife berates him: "Why are you sending her letters when you know she can't read?" In the Hollywood studio, there is this exchange between a man and a woman: "We're development executives. We're the people you want to be."
A small surprise here is Julie Kavner, the voice actress of Marge Simpson, as Nan, who gives one heck of a speech to the arrogant film producer Burke: "No woman has ever told you that you have an almost barbaric insensitivity? That you seem to have lapsed into some sort of final cynicism where you actually believe that not only does everyone think the way you do, but only you have the courage to express it? That you seem horribly certain that everyone else is only pretending when they talk about love... I am here for the same reason that 86% of older women love Beauty and the Beast. I would like to believe that underneath the creature there’s a sweet caring guy." The movie takes a sly jab at Hollywood studios at times. In one of the most painful and unforgettable, Matt does a great screen test, but then producer Burke asks the women watching the tape if they would go to bed with Matt. When they say no, Matt is excluded from further consideration for the film role. Brooks doesn't care that much about the plot or the narrative or the style as much as he cares about creating wonderful characters and dialogues, a 'slice-of-life' emotional collection. In this edition, he is a bit overstretched and without a clear focus. "As Good as It Gets" is the better film. But the moment where Matt goes to Cathy's (excellent Joely Richardson) apartment to do a read-through of the script, they sit on the couch, and then she suddenly leans towards him and randomly kisses his nose, is so sweet it could easily fit as a missing scene in "As Good as It Gets", showing that even some of the lesser artists' works carry the seeds of greatness in them.
Grade:++
