About Schmidt is a very particularly American movie, so perhaps the Foreign Press just didn’t quite get it. Our country is so vast and diverse that the funny, the sad, the improbable and the absurd often coexist. And while what swirls around Nicholson in About Schmidt is often very funny, his performance is deadpan and serious.

And it isn’t just the Foreign Press Association that isn’t sure what to make of About Schmidt. Many people have come up to me to talk about this film, a sure sign that the filmmaker has touched something real in the audience. They want answers, or they want me to agree with their view of the film.

While some people have said that they think About Schmidt is touching and profound, others have been hostile to its treatment of the Midwest and Nicholson’s character Warren Schmidt. I’ve also been asked, “What is all the fuss about this movie?” by people who think it is mildly amusing but that it doesn’t really go anywhere or have much of a message.

I enjoyed About Schmidt but admit to being mildly disappointed.

Alexander Payne’s two previous films, Citizen Ruth and Election, are to my tastes far more compelling, entertaining and intelligent. I have come to expect very sharp satire from Payne and his screenwriting collaborator, Jim Taylor. About Schmidt is the third film for Payne, his third in a trilogy of films set in his hometown of Omaha. Citizen Ruth is a hilarious but harrowing film about the people in this country who live the abortion debate beyond all reason. Election details every ghastly stupidity that high school can engender. About Schmidt by comparison is meandering and mild.

Warren Schmidt is about to retire as vice-president of an insurance company. He’s clearly full of trepidation about retirement. This change in his life is forcing him to stop and think about things. The early scenes that detail life in the Midwest are very funny. Payne clearly loves his hometown and embraces its contradictions.

When Warren’s good friend and colleague Ray gets up to give a toast at Warren’s retirement dinner, he is painfully sincere and also drunk.

Later revelations about Ray’s complicated relations with the Schmidt family make this scene even funnier in hindsight. When Warren’s younger, smart aleck replacement at work brags about his degree in business from Drake, I laughed out loud. I’ve only known one Drake graduate. He was the kind of guy that described Harvard as the Drake of the East Coast. Is that misplaced pompous attitude part of the curriculum?

Payne is expert at capturing those things that we love about the Midwest and turning them into things that we don’t love about the Midwest.

Nice flute music becomes a bad wedding version of a Dan Fogelberg song.

After retirement, Warren and his wife Helen (June Squibb) wander around the house trying not to bump into each other. Warren, who is portrayed as something of a cheapskate, secretly sponsors an African child, Ndugu and starts writing him letters.

In a voice-over letter to Ndugu we hear that everything about Helen drives Warren crazy. When Helen dies suddenly, we realize, as does Warren, that he understands very little of his own feelings or why he has lived the life he has lived. Yes, he needed to support his family, but suddenly that doesn’t mean what he thought it meant. Who is supporting whom? The most shocking thing in these scenes is seeing Nicholson playing scenes opposite a woman his own age.

Without June, Warren’s attention turns to his daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis). When she comes for the funeral, Warren wants her to stay for awhile and take care of him, an offer she firmly rebuffs. Warren wants her company, but he also wants her to give up her fiance Randall (Dermot Mulroney), a goof with a bad haircut and moustache and little to recommend him. At least in Warren’s eyes. While it is easy to see what Warren despises about Randall, it is also easy to see that he is sweet and attentive to Jeannie. And while from Warren’s perspective he has been a doting father, Jeannie’s perspective of her father is very different.

Left alone after the funeral, Warren’s journey of self-discovery begins. First he lets the house go. His personal habits sink to those of the average frat boy. Eventually, he has to flee the scene in an attempt to get outside his own head in the motor home Helen insisted that they buy. After some comic adventures on the road, he arrives in Denver for the wedding.

In Denver, the full horror of Jeannie’s choice becomes clear to Warren, and the comedy of the situation kicks in. Jeannie’s mother-in-law to be, Roberta, is the anti-Warren. Kathy Bates plays Randall’s doting aging hippie of a mom. She gives Warren muscle relaxers, puts him in a room with a waterbed and tries to seduce him in a hot tub.

Bates’ nude scene in the hot tub is simply fantastic. Every moment she is on screen, About Schmidt is flying a little higher. All the performances in About Schmidt are excellent, but only Bates is really able to stand up to Nicholson.

At the wedding reception, Warren delivers the toast that all good fathers are supposed to deliver. It is a remarkable scene, with all of Warren’s conflicting feelings about the wedding on display for the audience in the theater and yet disguised for the audience in the movie at the reception. It is no wonder that whatever message or meaning you attribute to About Schmidt, everyone walks away from the film knowing they’ve seen a complex, subtle performance by an actor who usually wins the day with his famous leer. Nicholson barely smiles at all in About Schmidt, but the film belongs to him.