A waitress sees her crumby husband scalped by two hit men and has a psychotic episode, where she sets out for LA thinking that she once once engaged to a doctor who in reality is an actor on a hospital soap opera, all the while being pursued by the hit men, with one of those men being in love with her. This is the quirky plot for the neurotic Nurse Betty, a comedy that some people considered a masterpiece, a movie that I consider drab fluff.

Nurse Betty's faults do not lie in its actors, which feature the likes of Renee Zellwegger, Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock, and Greg Kinnear. While many praised Zellwegger's performance, I can only say it was good; there was nothing outstanding about her nutty character. In fact, her character is quite annoying, and it's hard to like an actress when you don't like the character. And it's hard to like the movie when you don't like the main and title character. The only really noteworthy performance of the group comes from Greg Kinnear who plays a character he's played before (but he's still really good at it - that's why he got the job).

The main reason this movie isn't very good is that it is boring. That might not be the most intellectual sentence in history, but it's the truth. Nurse Betty just failed to capture my attention. There is some remotely interesting comedy at times, but most of the movie tries to play off its quirkiness and it just doesn't work. There isn't anything exciting about the film.

The dream sequences are annoying. At one point Zellwegger and Kinnear dance in her mind. At another point, Morgan Freeman dreams of making out with Zellwegger. Are these necessary? They're stupid. And weird. Oh, and annoying.

The ending is also pretty dark. As with any movie dealing with hit men, the endings almost always include gunfights and people dying. It just adds to show what a messed up movie Nurse Betty is. On the one hand, it's a comedy with a woman not in her right mind. On the other, it is about a couple hit men trying to chase her down. The two plots don't work together as well as the writers wanted.

Nurse Betty is too obsessed in leading its story along with weird characters, trying to pass it off as original. It doesn't work. Nurse Betty needed to go the hospital before it reached theaters.

Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.