<Li> "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"--Eric Idle </Li> <P> As Good as It Gets was also a box office hit, opening at number three at the box office (behind Titanic and Tomorrow Never Dies) with $12.6 million, and eventually earning over $148 million domestically and $314 million worldwide . It is Jack Nicholson's second most lucrative film, behind Batman . </P> <P> Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes reports that 84% of professional critics gave the film a positive review based on 77 reviews . Metacritic, a web site that evaluates films by averaging their overall critical response, gave the film a metascore of 67, signifying generally favorable reviews . The film's two lead actors, Nicholson and Hunt, both received Academy and Golden Globe awards for their performances . Chicago Reader film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote that what director James Brooks "Manages to do with (the characters) as they struggle mightily to connect with one another is funny, painful, beautiful, and basically truthful--a triumph for everyone involved ." </P> <P> However, praise for the film was not uniform among critics . While Roger Ebert gave the film three stars (out of four), he called the film a "compromise, a film that forces a smile onto material that doesn't wear one easily," writing that the film drew "back to story formulas," but had good dialog and performances . Washington Post critic Desson Howe gave a generally negative review of the movie, writing that it "gets bogged down in sentimentality, while its wheels spin futilely in life - solving overdrive ." </P>

Cast of movie as good as it gets