ABOUT SCHMIDT (2002). Set in the director's favorite city, Omaha, About Schmidt finds Alexander Payne venturing from his Nebraska stomping grounds and from the caustic but limited satire of his previous two features, Citizen Ruth (1996) and Election (1999). Payne not only sends his hero as far away as Kansas and Colorado but also pushes him into a confrontation with the void of mortality and the consolation of compassion. Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson in a consummate performance) has just come to the end of career as an assistant vice-president; what's left is his aging, controlling wife, Helen (June Squibb), and a brand new Winnebago. His only glimpse of hope is a TV ad for Save the Children: Schmidt finds himself sponsoring a tiny Tanzanian boy named Ndugu. But he has his own child, Jeannie (Hope Davis), to worry about, since he has no confidence in the man (Dermot Mulroney) she's has chosen to marry. So he climbs into the Winnebago and heads out to Denver -- with stops and detours along the way to reflect on his own and America's past and future -- to try to stop the wedding. His journey recalls the one in David Lynch's The Straight Story, and as in that film, Payne's irony transcends parody and approaches the tragic. And the peerless Nicholson makes About Schmidt's concluding tear -- shocking, mysterious, and inevitable -- no laughing matter at all. (124m)

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