Barnes & Noble

A delightfully twisted comedy enacted by an outstanding ensemble cast, Nurse Betty gives winsome Renee Zellweger her best big-screen role to date. She's adorably ditzy as a small-town Kansas waitress who becomes delusional after witnessing her husband's murder and drives cross-country to Hollywood, where she imagines she can build a new life as a character in her favorite soap opera. Greg Kinnear plays the egotistical actor who believes Betty is an unusually dedicated actress and importunes his producer to give her a part, setting off an improbable but entertaining chain reaction of events. Director Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men) performs a delicate balancing act, offsetting the main storyline's disarming daffiness with a darker-toned subplot involving hit men Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock, whose pursuit of the witness becomes complicated by Freeman's apparent infatuation with her. Nurse Betty defies easy classification; it blends elements of road movies, Hollywood-themed satires, neo-noir thrillers, and Technicolored fairy tales. Think The Wizard of Oz directed by Quentin Tarantino, and you'll be on the right track. Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

After two acclaimed independent films in which he took a troubling look at male/female relations, director Neil LaBute moves on to less controversial ground in this dark comedy. Betty Sizemore (Renee Zellweger) is a woman from Kansas City who waits tables at a diner and is married to an insensitive thug named Del (Aaron Eckhart). One of Betty's few pleasures in life is the soap opera A Reason to Love. Her favorite character is handsome Dr. David Ravell, played by George McCord (Greg Kinnear). One night, Del gets involved in a drug deal with a pair of gangsters, Charlie (Morgan Freeman) and his sidekick Wesley (Chris Rock). Del's thoughtless racial slurs lead to an arguement, and the short-tempered Wesley attacks him; Charlie is forced to kill Del, as Betty watches. Dazed and in shock, Betty hops into her car, deciding that the time is right for a date with destiny. Betty tracks down George McCord, and soon the soap's producer Lyla (Allison Janney) is considering Betty for a part on A Reason to Love, not realizing that Betty doesn't want to play Dr. Ravell's nurse and fiance, she wants to be her. Betty, meanwhile, has no idea that the drugs that Del was trying to sell are still in her car, and that Charlie and Wesley are hot on her trail, determined to get the dope and silence her once and for all. Nurse Betty also features Kathleen Wilhoite, Crispin Glover, and Pruitt Taylor Vince. The film was shown in competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the prize for Best Screenplay. Mark Deming

Entertainment Weekly

The lines between reality and fantasy, goodness and violence, have rarely been so beautifully drawn as in this tangy dark comedy directed by Neil LaBute.

Product Details

• UPC: 025192033643
• Source: UNIVERSAL STUDIOS
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Time: 1:48:00
• Sales Rank: 42,113