Nurse Betty (2000)

Oddball dramedy about two people in love with their unreal fantasies

A small town waitress in Kansas (Renée Zellweger) is married to a jerk car salesman, but enjoys a soap opera in which she fantasies about the hero-doctor on the show (Greg Kinnear). Meanwhile a criminal duo (Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock) chases the woman to Los Angeles whereupon the leader seems to develop a thing for her.

"Nurse Betty" (2000) is part dramedy, part road movie, part crime drama, part romcom and part black comedy. While it's rarely laugh-out loud, it's pretty consistently amusing. What throws it off is that it's such an eccentric mixture viewers don't know how to take it, especially with a fairly radical scalping sequence (and I don't mean scalping tickets). It helps, though, when you grasp that the movie's about Betty and Charlie and their romantic idealism of people they've never met.

At the end of the day this is an offbeat Tarantino-esque flick that's half-good and half-meh. The "meh" reaction is mostly due to its curiosities. Thankfully, it has depth and plays better on repeat viewings.

The movie runs about one hour, 50 minutes, and was shot in Los Angeles; Durango, Colorado; Grand Canyon, Arizona; and Rome, Italy (closing scene).

GRADE: B-/C+