With terrific lead performances by Jack Nicholson as a demonic novelist and Helen Hunt as a Manhattan waitress, As Good as It Gets is as good as mature adult entertainment gets on the silver screen.

This is the stuff of formula but director James L. Brooks and co-writer Mark Andrus elevate it with terrific writing.

On one hand, it's Brooks's film that most betrays his TV sitcom roots; it's also one of his more ambitious works, packing in subplots and subjects by the handful-indicative of a filmmaker who seems to genuinely struggle with the confines of the genre.

Despite seemingly being given pretty much free rein to ham things up mercilessly, he [Jack Nicholson] shines without ever becoming too much.