About Schmidt (2002)

Bleak black comedy about a man in Omaha, Nebraska who leaves an insurance company to enjoy his retirement, only to find that his wife dies soon after. Suddenly he has no shortage of free time, but he has no one to spend it with. Struggling to find meaning in his life, he begins to sponsor a child in Tanzania (his letters to the boy form the film’s narration), travelling around in his huge new Winnebago, and trying to persuade his daughter not to marry her waterbed salesman fiancé. 

Jack Nicholson is as fascinating to watch as always, and expertly portrays the bemused, slightly shell-shocked widower. Kathy Bates is excellent as the rather scary mother of his future son-in-law. 

It’s a fairly depressing film, and deliberately so. It’s to be respected for not offering any trite or easy resolutions to this lonely 66-year-old’s predicament in the way that a more obvious narrative might have done. But a few more laughs would have helped since a lot of it is genuinely painful to sit through.