Nurse Betty Directed by: Neil LaBute Starring: Renee Zellweger, Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock, Aaron Eckhart, Greg Kinnear, Crispin Glover, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Tia Texada Ah, to be entertained once again at the local megaplex!! These good films keep sneaking up on me after a summer of being served platter upon platter of celluloid destined for the garbage disposal. Nurse Betty is a relief, plain and simple. It's a quirky comedy with a lot of human touch, and along with Chicken Run, these two films were the only real comedies to reach the megaplexes this summer. Nurse Betty was directed by Neil LaBute, who if you have yet to see his two other works, In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, you are missing out on some great cinema. LaBute's two previous films have a pure independent structure about them, while Nurse Betty has the studio look and backing I'm sure. Yet, despite the crossover, LaBute has yet to change in terms of presenting a very dark sense of humor in the film and putting "real" characters on the screen. Nurse Betty starts off in Kansas, introducing us to Betty Sizemore (Renee Zellweger), a waitress at a local diner, and her husband, Del (Aaron Eckhart), who runs a small car lot. Betty is obsessed with the hospital soap opera "A Reason to Love", and has a schoolgirl crush on the show's top heart surgeon named Dr. David Ravell (Greg Kinnear). Del himself has several side-projects in his life, one of which is dealing drugs. Del makes a few bad decisions, and two loan shark types, played here by Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock, show up to collect the goods. Let's just say Del gets scalped, shot and dumped, and Betty sees everything. In a state of shock, Betty starts to believe that she lives in the world of "A Reason to Love" and ends up driving to California to reunite with her former lover, David Ravell. There's the side-story of the loan sharks running Betty down, but both intertwine together so well that it helps instead of hurting the comical tone of the film. There's a lot more to the film than mentioned above, but like most great films, it's best not to know too much beforehand. The entire cast puts on great performances. Morgan and Zellweger both give the best work they've done in years, and Crispin Glover (best known for playing the young George McFly in Back to the Future) even shows up in a show-stopping role. My favorite performance in the film was by LaBute regular Aaron Eckhart in the role of Del. Even though the role is small, Eckhart seems to put life in any character he tackles. Both Eckhart and LaBute have proven to be forces to reckon with, and Nurse Betty I'm sure is just one in a stack of great work to come from both men.

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