Christmas is not a bed of roses. “Merry Christmas” is not merry for some. The infectious, good natured comedy As Good as It Gets (1997) is apt viewing because Merry Christmas is a ‘broken hallelujah’.

Though not a real Christmas movie, it even contains some profanity so is hardly Christ-mas strictly speaking, it’s got that something about life that touches everyone. We know it’s true: life is as good as it gets whatever that life happens to be. This is especially true at Christmas.

This comedy starring Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt (Pay it Forward), and Greg Kinnear (Heaven is For Real), and directed and written by James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment), As Good as it Gets is the best film of 1997, outstripping Titanic, Good Will Hunting, L.A. Confidential and The Full Monty for best picture of the year in my books.

Not so better off

An obsessive compulsive who is a writer of romance (played by Nicholson), a gay artist, and a waitress get together by a course of events.

The writer gets the brunt of their animosity because he has more money and is a jerk. The writer’s not accommodating the gay artist who he finds offensive. He is all over the waitress he is attracted to. She has her own down-to-earth problems that he is interested in fixing to impress her.

In the end they haven’t got it all together. Any of them.

They aren’t chasing after something. They all got their problems.

People compare themselves to others at Christmas so they get the feeling they are worse off. But if they knew what others had to go through, in secret and in private perhaps, unseen by public eye, they would realize that others are not so better off. Even the rich suffer.

Accepting one’s lot in life is sometimes the best. This message of As Good as It Gets makes sense at Christmas. Life isn’t perfect or ideal or maybe the way we want it. Life is what it is, just accept it. It doesn’t have to be dandy all the time to live your life as good as it can possibly be.