And yet more proof that I'll watch Jack Nicholson have a crack at anything. I've avoided it in the past because I've never been very persuaded by Helen Hunt. Both got Oscared for their efforts here.
We're in NYC with rich romance-writer Nicholson beginning by being very obnoxious to his neighbours. (The excuse is that he has OCD — which I feel he communicated clearly and sensitively — but absolutely nobody thinks to ask him about his bizarre behaviours.) He smoodges every role he ever had into this performance. One fixture of his day is to get a meal at a diner where golden-hearted waitress Hunt is the only person who will serve him. Things go as they need to with the icky older man/younger woman scenario. Adding colour to but not distraction from this gooey centre is Greg Kinnear as a gay man; his role is essentially to exhibit the changing mores of the 1990s, when one could expect to encounter or deliver racial (etc) slurs (etc) with knowing and perhaps indulgent eyerolls (etc). I enjoyed Cuba Gooding Jr's uncomplication as he often takes it to Jack. Also Shirley Knight as Hunt's placeholder mother, and a teary Yeardley Smith.
The plot is powered by the time-honoured American trope that the rich, eccentric man is surrounded by normal people with clear needs that he can and should service with his money. If co-writer and director James L. Brooks had any sincerely-held convictions he should've made a sequel.
Roger Ebert: three stars. Characters conformed to convention. Janet Maslin got a bit more into it.