Could There Have Been LESS Chemistry?

Beginning of movie, she doesn't like him, then as things unfold she realizes she's basically in love with him, yet Melvin doesn't exactly relate to her in a romantic way or want her like she wants him. He almost wants her merely as a girl toy. Agree, there is very little chemistry.

hodie wrote: "Hunt and Nicholson together were like nails scritching on a blackboard. I never saw such an irritating on-screen couple."

THANK YOU!

I thought I was the only one who felt the same way when watching the two of them on-screen trying to force some semblance of a relationship out of these two characters.

It all just seem so ham-fisted and mashed together for the sake of the script.

I liked them individually but watching in the theatres I never thought they would actually get together.

Someone earier said that he walked on the cracks at the end, but pretty the movie went out of its way to show that he wasn't walking on the cracks, although for a second they tried to make you think that he was. The camera zoomed out or something and he was walking on smooth asphalt, while Carol was walking on brick road.

>> My guess so far is that a lot of you are into romance novel kind of cliches, and the little edge present here because of Melvin not being some boring Hollywood poster boy, and Helen Hunt being... Helen Hunt, didn't quite cut it. The crab restaurant scene was great. Sweet and very funny the way it ended. <<

I agree that the restaurant scene displayed Carol and Melvin's best chemistry, but overall I didn't see this relationship EVER working out -- and it was due to lack of chemistry between the actors.

Maybe we needed a more compassionate ending? Maybe Carol should've liked the idea of going for rolls at 4am, and not telling him it sounded crazy. I just didn't see Carol EVER understanding Melvin or wanting to. She said she found him handsome, but you never felt it.

Now, Frankie and Johnny (with Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino) DID work. You felt these were two wounded souls who clicked. I never got that with Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson.

In Titanic, though Leo's acting was a bit uneven, I did feel chemistry between Kate and Leo which transferred to their characters.

Despite their age difference, I liked the chemistry between Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window.

Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in the Notebook - TONS of chemistry!

-Jane

I never liked the romantic element of the movie. It was totally unnecessary. If the point was for him to learn to reach out to other people, and he's just made his first friend presumably ever, having a girlfriend seems like an unrealistically huge leap. Plus, there was no real base for his affection in the first place. Melvin seemed like an asexual character to me, especially in his restaurant interactions with Carol. It wasn't flirtatious ... it was more like the "cranky old man and the sassy waitress" schtick. They could have cast a great character actor in that role, having it be a memorable side side character, and left more room for the friendship between Melvin and Simon.

If the ending was supposed to imply that their relationship was doomed, then I feel slighted. I feel like it's *supposed* to be a happy, uplifting ending.

I guess what I dislike most about Carol is the saga with her son. It seemed like 90% her drama, 10% her son's illness. She mentioned she had insurance, so why would she be seeking medical care via the emergency room? There was no mention of her son seeing a regular doctor or having any sort of regular care at all. We saw in other scenes that she was impatient and quick to fly off the handle, so I imagined her acting that way with doctors, shopping the kid all around demanding answers but not actually listening to anyone. I mean, for your son's entire life you've had to take him to the emergency room 5 times a MONTH, but these are things that, turns out, Dr. Harold Ramis can fix overnight? They were blown away when he suggested allergy skin tests, I thought, "Okay; these characters are idiots." I felt like his illness needed to be better defined as something hard to treat, because I just couldn't buy it and it made her seem like her son wasn't getting care because of her issues. She obviously wanted him to be well, but at the same time, she liked that he needed her so much when he was sick. She seemed emotionally dependent on being his caregiver.

I guess I've thought about this more than I realized ...

"What do you call that hairstyle you're wearing?" "Arthur."