Safe to say, this is another Jack Nicholson film about a middle-aged man who is clueless. He created this role for himself in “As Good As It Gets” and reprised it in “About Schmidt”; here he is again. Of course, the type of cluelessness changes from film to film. Melvin Udall was clueless about people; Warren Schmidt was clueless about life; now Harry Langer is clueless about women.

Harry (Nicholson) is a 63-year-old (*) successful businessman who likes to date (considerably) younger women. A potential inamorata (Amanda Peet), even more fascinated by him than he is by her, takes him for a weekend to her mother’s beach house in the Hamptons, where mom (Diane Keaton) and aunt (Frances McDormand) walk in on him in his shorts. Shortly after this, Harry keels over with a full-fledged heart attack and is taken to a nearby hospital, where a sympathetic doctor (Keanu Reeves, who immediately recognizes mom as a famous playwright and develops an infatuation for her) brings him back from near death, and sends him back to the beach house to recuperate. Daughter goes back to town, aunt goes back to Columbia (where she teaches courses in women’s studies), and que sera, sera. Mom naturally falls in love — Harry, however, has learned nothing. It takes him the rest of the movie to figure out that women have a point of view, too.

There are some comic moments. Nicholson is a good actor, assuming that he is actually acting and not living the part, and at times it shows. In one scene, at the hospital, Doc Julian asks him if he has recently taken Viagra. Nicholson, looking past the doctor at the trio of potential furies (daughter, mom, aunt) waiting in the doorway, naturally says, “No”. “Good,” says Julian, “because I’ve had nitroglycerin added to your drip, and the combination of nitroglycerin and Viagra can sometimes be fatal.” The look on Nicholson’s face as he looks up at the first drop of amber liquid falling into the IV drip and then lunges to yank the IV needle from his arm is precious, and certainly difficult to fake.

I also found the beach-walk discussion between Harry and mom about his record business amusing. Harry, who has a top-ranked hip-hop company, insists that rap is poetry; mom wants to know, how many words you can find that rhyme with “bitch”. (**)

Some movies are rated sleepers. Usually, this means that the movie may not do well in theatrical release, but will be popular on TV and purchasable media. Sometimes it simply means that the little guy in the Chronicle datebook movie icons is shown sleeping alongside a description in question. In my case, I simply check whether or not anybody in the audience (particularly, anybody sitting alongside me) is asleep during the film. By that criterion, this movie certainly qualified as a sleeper. (***) (I myself closed my eyes a couple of times, but that was to rest them, not to sleep, I assure you.)

N.B.: We got our tickets for “The Return of the King” today!!!

Christmas Day: “Peter Pan” and “Paycheck”, the latter the fifth film I know of made from a Philip K. Dick story (****). And from the trailers, “Peter Pan” is not going to be reprise of “Hook”, which was in its time something of a disappointment.

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(*) This is “middle-aged”, of course, by the theory, quite common among people my age, that “middle age” is that period that ends a few years after your current age, whatever that may be.

(**) Actually quite a few, if you bother to count them. And although I could live through the entire rest of my life without hearing another piece of rap, and not feel the deprivation in the slightest, from an objective point of view the writers of rap lyrics, at least those who devise them extemporaneously — if any — are probably the only people alive in our society today who would be acceptable as apprentices by the ancient Bardic schools. Sad to say, in my opinion country & western comes in second, though a distant second …

(***) Perhaps the average age of the audience should be taken into account, as well. This is the first time I can remember attending a film at which one lady came in with a walker …

(****) The others are “Bladerunner”, “Total Recall”, “Screamers” (which I never saw, but which came from one of my favorite Phil Dick stories, “Second Variety”) and the recent “Minority Report”.