Nurse Betty (2000)

Comedy about a widow's post-traumatic obsession with a soap star.

Director:

Neil LaBute

Writers:

John C. Richards (story), John C. Richards (screenplay)

Stars:

Renée Zellweger, Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock

Won 1 Golden Globe. Another 4 wins & 14 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Morgan Freeman	...	Charlie
Renée Zellweger	...	Betty
Chris Rock	...	Wesley
Greg Kinnear	...	Dr. David Ravell
Aaron Eckhart	...	Del
Tia Texada	...	Rosa
Crispin Glover	...	Roy Ostery
Pruitt Taylor Vince	...	Ballard
Allison Janney	...	Lyla
Kathleen Wilhoite	...	Sue Ann
Elizabeth Mitchell	...	Chloe
Susan Barnes	...	Darlene
Harriet Sansom Harris	...	Ellen
Sung Hi Lee	...	Jasmine
Laird Macintosh	...	Dr. Lonnie Walsh

Storyline

A Kansas City waitress with dreams of becoming a nurse becomes delusional after seeing her no-good car salesman husband murdered. Becoming delusional from shock, she becomes convinced that she is the former fiancée of her soap opera idol. What she also believes is that the soap opera is real and goes to LA to find the hospital where he works as a cardiologist. Meanwhile, her husband's murderers are searching for the drugs stolen by her husband and, as luck would have it, they are stored in the trunk of the car she drove off in. Freeman, an aging hit man planning his retirement after this job, also becomes delusional about the woman he is tracking.

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Plot Keywords:

police officer | surgical theater | television camera | television commercial | television producer | 

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Taglines:

This September Get Ready For Nurse Betty.

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Genres:

Comedy | Crime | Drama | Romance

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for strong violence, pervasive language and a scene of sexuality

Details

Country:

Germany USA

Language:

English Spanish

Release Date:

8 September 2000 (USA)

Also Known As:

Betty

Filming Locations:

Stahl House, Case House 22 - 1635 Woods Drive, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$24,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$7,145,950, 10 September 2000, Wide Release

Gross USA:

$25,167,270, 17 December 2000

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$2,133,268, 7 December 2000

Company Credits

Production Co:

Gramercy Pictures (I), Pacifica Film, Propaganda Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

110 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS Dolby

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Kathleen Wilhoite and Pruitt Taylor Vince guest appeared together in the Quantum Leap (1989) episode "Moments to Live", where Sam is kidnapped by an obsessed, and mentally unstable, soap opera fan.

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Goofs

When Betty drives away from her town, she is shown passing a "welcome to Kansas" sign which is on passenger side of the road facing her, even though she later says it is the first time she has ever left Kansas.

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Quotes

[Charlie is criticizing Wesley for scalping Betty's husband]
Wesley: Why the fuck did you mention all them Indians for?
Charlie: Jesus Christ, Wesley! If I had mentioned Ty Cobb, would you have beat him to death with a baseball bat?

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Connections

References Roman Holiday (1953)

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Soundtracks

Lady Shave
Written by Sigurdur Kjartansson, Daniel Agust Haraldsson (as Daniel Ágúst Haraldson),
Birgir Thorarinsson and Magnus Gudmundsson
Performed by Gus Gus
Courtesy of 4AD
By Arrangement with Warner Special Products

User Reviews

Cute, edgy and very funny

This is an adorable, if somewhat edgy, comedy from a clever and witty script by John C. Richards, crisply directed by the very talented Neil LaBute, proving that he can handle comedy just as adroitly as he can the art house movie.

Renée Zellweger stars as Betty Sizemore, a sort of Doris Day of the 21st century, a waitress from Kansas whose fantasy life centers around Dr. David Ravell (Greg Kinnear), star of a TV soap opera called, "A Reason to Live," to such a fanatical degree that she has memorized lines from the show after watching the tapes over and over again. (This will come in handy later on.)

Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock play a father-son team of cocaine-dealing hit men who ignite the premise of the movie by murdering Betty's slimy used car salesman husband, played by Aaron Eckhart, who starred in In the Company of Men (1997), also directed by Neil LaBute. Chris Rock is a comedic psychopath, and Freeman a fatherly murderer whose favorite dictum is "three in the head, you know they're dead." One of the amazing and characteristic things about Morgan Freeman is that even while playing a professional criminal, he manages to sound like the wisest, gentlest man you ever knew.

True, the plot relies heavily on co-incidence (Betty copping the keys to the Buick that just happens to have the goods in the trunk), precise timing (meeting Dr. David and entourage at exactly the right moment), and some questionable psychology (Betty's partial and convenient amnesia). But such contrivances should be written off as poetic license and ignored. After all, who would criticize Shakespeare for the tortured plots of his comedies? More significantly, what makes this work is the cleverness of the plot melded well with the personalities of the characters (while gently satirizing them), and some very funny dialogue. My favorite line is when Freeman, looking gravely at a picture of the disappeared little miss Nurse Betty, soberly remarks to Rock, "We may be dealing with a cunning, ruthless woman here." I wonder, could it be that some of the pseudonymous (and humorless) reviewers who trashed this movie here and at IMDb are jealous, out-of-work screen writers?

An observation and a question: Renée Zellweger has the kind of on-screen presence to delight the most jagged heart. And who really is the reigning queen of contemporary filmland comedy, Zellweger or Reese Witherspoon? They are both brilliant. Witherspoon is a little more over the top while Zellweger is more impish. It would be interesting to see them trade roles, say, Zellweger as goody-goody A-student Tracy Flick in Election (1999) and Witherspoon as Nurse Betty. Too bad something like that can't be done.

Incidentally, the song, "Ca Sera, Sera" heard in the background won an academy award for best song in the Hitchcock thriller, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), starring James Stewart and Doris Day. The reason it reappears here is not entirely clear, but the resemblance of the wonderfully naive Nurse Betty to the on- and off-screen Doris Day (who also had a hit recording of "Ca Sera, Sera,") goes beyond the strawberry blond hair to a kind of irrepressible innocence. In Nurse Betty, however, the Doris Day world of white picket fences and monogamy is given a contemporary spin. Although this is to some extent a romantic comedy, it is one in which the answer to the question, Who gets the girl? is one never seen in a Doris Day flick.

Bottom line: if you can watch this without laughing old loud and crying some real tears, you need to get your hard drive fixed.

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)