LaBute's approach could have been more scathing, but, in a surprising show of restraint (surprising considering how uncompromising his previous films were),he avoids the contempt of characters that is frequently demanded for a vicious parody. Instead, he opts for more character identification and a higher dramatic quotient.

 

He wants us to like and understand these individuals, especially Betty. This leads to fewer laughs than one might expect from something being loosely identified as a comedy, but a better overall balance.Soap opera fans, always an easy target, are treated almost kindly (although the screenplay calls them "people with no lives [who] watch other people's fake lives"). And the pseudo-soap clips have the right mix of slight overacting and melodrama to make them believable.

 

From what we see of A Reason To Love, it would be perfectly at home on any of the TV networks' afternoon schedules. However, the primary target of LaBute's satirical saber, the artificiality of Hollywood, is repeatedly skewered. Nurse Betty argues that the people in the entertainment business are so self-absorbed that they can't tell the difference between an overzealous would-be star and a mentally disturbed individual.

 

Nurse Betty offers Renée Zellweger an opportunity to shine like she hasn't since she announced herself to the world as Tom Cruise's love interest in Jerry Maguire. The role is perfect for her and plays to her strengths (unlike that in the recent Me,Myself & Irene, where she was little more than a foil for Jim Carrey). As Betty, Zellweger is charming, perky, and entirely sympathetic.

 

There are times(mostly on occasions when the script loses its tenuous connection with reality when she holds things together by sheer force of personality, and she's capable of playing both the dramatic and comic scenes with equal aptitude. The part may not have been written specifically for her, but it's impossible seeing anyone else in it.

 

As is always the case, Morgan Freeman brings a touch of dignity to his part - in this case, an aging hit man who has turned almost philosophical. Unfortunately, Chris Rock is not nearly as impressive as Freeman's sidekick. Rock's confrontational, in-your-face approach makes him seem like he's appearing in a different movie.

 

It's an abrasive performance that alienates the audience while simultaneously making Freeman appear to be even more the consummate professional. Meanwhile, Greg Kinnear brings his trademarked brand of suave insincerity to the role of the soap actor who plays Betty's true love. The intriguing supporting cast includes Pruitt Taylor Vince, Crispin Glover, LaBute regular Aaron Eckhart, and Tia Texada as Betty's Latina roommate in L.A.

 

The best part of Nurse Betty is the climax, which gains a comic momentum of its own. Without revealing any details, I can say that a few unexpected things happen during this sequence, which also offers the most overtly humorous moments of the film.

 

LaBute ends on a high note,which is a credit to him,his cast, and screenwriters John Richards & James Flamberg. Once again, the director has distinguished him as that rare Hollywood commodity: someone who is willing to take a chance on an unconventional project and turn it into something enjoyable. 

 

 

Neil LaBute's "Nurse Betty" is about two dreamers in love with their fantasies. One is a Kansas housewife. The other is a professional criminal. The housewife is in love with a doctor on a television soap opera. The criminal is in love with the housewife, whose husband he has killed. What is crucial is that both of these besotted romantics are invisible to the person they are in love with.Morgan Freeman is Charlie, the killer, and Renee Zellweger is Betty, the housewife and waitress. 

 

Their lives connect because Del (Aaron Eckhart), Betty's worthless husband, tries to stiff Charlie on a drug deal. Charlie and Wesley (Chris Rock) turn up at his house, threaten him, scalp him and kill him. Well, Charlie only kills him because Wesley scalps him--and then what are you gonna do?Betty witnesses the murder,but blanks it out of her memory. Her husband was a rat, she doesn't miss him, and in her mind his death frees her to drive out to Los Angeles to meet her "ex-fiance," a doctor on a soap opera. 

 

 

Charlie and Wesley trail her, and in the course of their pursuit, Charlie's mind also jumps the track. Under the influence of Betty's sweet smile in a photograph, he begins to idealize her-he speaks of her "grace"--and to see her as the bright angel of his lost hopes.In Los Angeles, Betty meets George (Greg Kinnear), the actor who plays the doctor. She relates only to the character, and as she talks to "Dr. David Ravell" at a charity benefit, George and his friends think they're witnessing a brilliant Method audition.Charlie and Wesley meanwhile arrive in Los Angeles with Charlie increasingly bewitched by fancies about Betty.

 

When they started chasing her, she was an eyewitness to murder who was driving a car in which her husband had hidden their drugs. Now Charlie thinks of her more as a person who would sympathize with his own broken ideals.I'm spending so much time on the plot of "Nurse Betty" because I think it's possible to misread. When the film premiered at Cannes in May, some reviews didn't seem to understand that Betty and Charlie are parallel characters, both projecting their dreams on figures they've created in their own fantasies. 

 

   

Look at this movie inattentively, especially if you're looking for Hollywood formulas, and all you see is a mad woman pursued by some drug dealers, like a high-rent "Crazy in Alabama." But it's more, deeper, and more touching than that. Zellweger plays Betty as an impossibly sweet, earnest, sincere, lovable, vulnerable woman--"a Doris Day type," as Charlie describes her. She has unwisely married Del, a vulgar louse who orders her around and eats her birthday cupcake. Her consolation is the daily soap opera about her fantasy lover Dr. Ravell. 

 

When Charlie and Wesley turn up, nobody knows she's home. She glimpses the murder from the next room, and her response is to hit the rewind button for a crucial soap opera scene she's missed. A therapist tells the local sheriff (Pruitt Taylor Vince) she remembers nothing; she's in an "altered state--that allows a traumatized person to keep on functioning." Betty heads west in the fatal Buick LeSabre with the drugs in the trunk, and outside a roadside bar she experiences a fantasy in which Dr. Ravell proposes marriage. 

   

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