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Splicing together an American road trip and an American story about succeeding is to risk wringing any remaining life out of both genres. Weak films which take to the road are generally reduced to on-the-road encounters of forced eccentricity, while most American films which are pumped out week after week contain a central character who wins through, a reality perfectly clear from scene one. Yet Neil LaBute - rightly praised for "In the Company of Men" (1997) and "Your Friends & Neighbors" (1998) - is hardly your average American director. Having created splendid roles for men in both films, he now turns his attention to Renée Zellweger - who successfully cut her creative teeth on "Jerry Maguire" (1996) - and presents her with a rich, tasty role which depends on her ability to swing from tearful soul-searching through frivolity and charm to girlish exuberance. Zellweger grabs the chance and so turns "Nurse Betty" into her best film to date. She is required to pack her character with all kinds of nuance and never misses a beat.
This is also true of LaBute himself who brings a variety of intriguing, different, even eccentric details to a scene without once removing it from the realms of reality. The reality here is that Betty, an obsessive fan of a particular TV soap, is so traumatised after witnessing her husband's scalp being removed by criminals that she wishes for the handsome soap doctor to become hers. Even when she is in the thick of the TV studio in Los Angeles, she still earnestly believes that the soap world is real.
LaBute ensures that the two worlds cross imaginatively and that other actors - even when not on screen all the time - have full roles too. Morgan Freeman is particularly amusing as a low-key, warm-hearted killer who starts lusting after Betty, but it is Zellweger - perfect as the innocent waiting to be mauled by life - who makes you realise that another star, and great actor, has been born.
