Heartfelt Nicholson, not for kids at all.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 2, 2010

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 2, 2003

These filmmakers have a feeling for the isolation of blasted lives, but they also can't resist putting them down.

Full Review | Jan 16, 2003

A poignant marker in the career of a major artist.

Full Review | Jan 8, 2003

Ultimately this is a frustrating patchwork: an uneasy marriage of Louis Begley's source novel (About Schmidt) and an old Payne screenplay.

| Jan 7, 2003

This is a startling, resonant, life-affirming movie -- both deeply funny and deeply moving.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 7, 2003

Nicholson, emphatically off autopilot and acting entirely without vanity, perfectly captures Schmidt's fear, loneliness and fervent hope that his life is worth more than he's come to assume.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 6, 2003

The movie is our story as much as it is Schmidt's, no matter if it's viewed as a self-reflection or cautionary tale.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 5, 2003

A thought-provoking and often-funny drama about isolation.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 3, 2003

Each deft stroke of Payne's pen is matched by a Nicholson flourish, transforming the film into a moving, bittersweet ballet.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 3, 2003

Nicholson ... produces the most understated -- and one of the most powerful -- performances of his career.

| Dec 20, 2002

The pleasures of About Schmidt are what might be called Midwestern pleasures: a sly sense of humor, sturdiness, self-discipline, solidarity.

| Dec 20, 2002

A road trip of self-discovery, by turns hilarious and poignant, for a man unexpectedly at odds with the tiny world he has so laboriously made.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 20, 2002

To see a master actor rejoicing in his craft -- and a character both simpler and more complex than most of the people we ever meet on screen -- About Schmidt is a worthy, artful journey.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 20, 2002

A seriously good movie, a challenge to viewers, a rebuke of the way many Americans live their lives.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 20, 2002

The film aims to be funny, uplifting and moving, sometimes all at once. The extent to which it succeeds is impressive.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Dec 20, 2002

The movie isn't just about Schmidt as a personality, it's a portrait of his world, and Payne and co-writer Taylor show a rare compassion for the superficially comfortable.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 20, 2002

By turns hilarious and poignant, Schmidt is about nothing special and everything important.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 20, 2002

There is a casual courage and dignity, and no small amount of obliviousness, in Nicholson's Schmidt that will remind many younger people of their parents, and many older people of their brothers and friends -- and themselves.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 20, 2002

About Schmidt winds up being about us all.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 20, 2002