As Good As It Gets

(Columbia TriStar)

James Brooks's caustic, sweet, pleasantly manipulative film has Jack Nicholson as Melvin Udall, a novelist whose purple prose about love belies a life of snide misanthropy, prejudice, annoyance, and wicked wit. Greg Kinnear is the gay neighbor, Helen Hunt is the tough waitress with a heart of gold and a sickly son, and Jill, one of the most beguiling dogs in filmdom, is Kinnear's Brussels griffon Verdell. Oscars went to Nicholson and Hunt.