YMMV / As Good as It Gets

• Base-Breaking Character: Melvin has increasingly become this due to Character Perception Evolution, with some viewers seeing him as an irredeemable racist or even a stalker (see Values Dissonance below).
• Catharsis Factor: However sympathetic you might be toward Melvin, his being ordered out of the diner after mocking a waitress' weight, with everyone applauding his departure, is absolutely what he deserved.
• Fair for Its Day: The film’s treatment of Simon’s homosexuality can seem somewhat corny and stereotypical today, but at the time of its release it was viewed as a very progressive, sympathetic and nuanced portrayal. Not to mention that Melvin's homophobia is clearly portrayed as a negative attitude that he sheds over the course of the movie.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Come 2015, the Supreme Court would legalize gay marriage nationwide, meaning Simon could potentially marry any potential life partner he wanted.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: When Simon tells Carol he wants to draw her in the nude, she initially refuses, saying “I’m a lot more shy than people think. I give off the wrong impression.” Well, maybe not quite the wrong impression...In 2012's The Sessions, Helen Hunt would go on to play a professional sexual surrogate whose job literally requires her to get naked in front of strangers.
• Hollywood Pudgy: The waitress taking over Carol's shift whom Melvin insults by comparing her to an elephant.
• Jerkass Woobie: Melvin. Even when he tries to be helpful, either in his own abrasive way or actually doing something kind all on its own, no one is ever grateful to him, they all treat him terribly because his mental illness bothers them, and they constantly demand he stop being so rude and confrontational to others while they feel no need whatsoever to be anything but horrible to him.
• Nightmare Fuel: Carol lives in a low-rent neighbourhood with her chronically ill son. She went home to see a Cadillac outside her apartment building... with "MD" plates on it...
  • ...then, after she rushes madly to her apartment to find that the doctor is there for her son, but nothing is particularly wrong with him at the moment, she is informed that the pediatrician has been sent to attend to her son by Melvin... a really creepy Jerkass customer from work who has come dangerously close to stalking her.
  • The Title Drop—"What if this is as good as it gets?"—is played for comedy, but in context, it's being said to a room full of psychiatric patients. The idea that this is as good as things get is literally the deepest fear of many people struggling with mental illness. Imagine that thought getting into the head of someone with severe depression, for example.
• One-Scene Wonder: Harold Ramis appears for one scene as the doctor who seemingly begins to address a lot of Carol's concerns regarding her son's health within a few hours of his arrival.
• Retroactive Recognition: Jamie Kennedy, Maya Rudolph, Lisa Edelstein, Julie Benz and Wood Harris.
• Signature Line: "You make me want to be a better man".
• Tear Jerker: Carol's thank-you note. And her conversation with her mother during: "What is it you want, Mom?"
  • "...I want us to go out!"
  • "I should have danced with you."
  • "How to die, basically."
  • "Some of us have great stories, pretty stories that take place at lakes with boats and friends and noodle salad. Just no one in this car. But, a lot of people, that's their story. Good times, noodle salad. What makes it so hard is not that you had it bad, but that you're that pissed that so many others had it good."
• Values Dissonance:
  • The age gap between Melvin and Carol tends to come under more scrutiny from viewers in the present day than it did when the movie came out. Worth noting is that Carol was originally meant to be ten years older than she ended up.
  • While Melvin helping Carol with her son's medical care is a decent thing to do, his attitude toward her comes across as borderline stalking and obsession.
  • Melvin is definitely meant to be a Jerkass but his overtly racist and/or homophobic outbursts can make him even more unsympathetic to current viewers than the movie originally intended.
• Values Resonance: Carol's struggle to get her son decent health care and Simon going bankrupt after a severe attack left him with massive medical bills reflect the struggles with America's private health care industry. A struggle that has become more intense as the cost of health has grown exponentially since the 2000s.
• The Woobie: Simon - first brutally beaten and then forced to use a wheelchair. See also his backstory in Dark and Troubled Past in the main tab.

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