This is a fine film.  It deals with heavy issues like aging and death and living a meaningful life and making a difference, but it does it all well.  It does have some funny moments, but it is a drama.  A good drama.  In every sense of the word.  If you want to sit down and watch yourself a fine film that is a drama, this is an excellent choice.

Jack Nicholson gives a first rate performance, as does the rest of the cast.  It's interesting, insightful, nice to look at, and edited well.  Not only that, but you get to see Kathy Bates naked!  What more could one want?

Even though it deals with heavy subjects, it won't necessarily make you bawl your eyes out.  You might, but toughen up, it's just a movie.  It will, probably, move you. 

Anyone who likes drama will enjoy this film.  Even those of you who only like to watch movies starring Vin Diesel might want to give this a try...it's an excellent film to expand your horizons with.  Who knows, you might even discover a whole new world!

The DVD has deleted scenes from the movie.  Each scene is introduced by a page of text that gives somewhat interesting details about who's who, why it was cut, what the artistic vision was, etc.  This would've been much better with a 10-second video clip of the director explaining this, as the text is left up on the screen much too long.  How long does it take to read a paragraph?  Not that long.  But the scenes are interesting, nonetheless.  It also shows just how much of a perfectionist the director is, as he is very apologetic for the sloppy cuts and music editing on these outtakes.

Also of note on the DVD are a collection of several "short films".  These were made by a number of editors who worked on the film.  They were given a bunch of B-roll footage from the 2nd unit director and told to put together little movies.  It's rather like watching the final projects in a video class in college, though a couple of them went above and beyond and created some wacky things.  It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of the film, but students of film might find these edits to be kind of interesting. 

DVD Extra Features: Short films, outtakes. 

Expectation from the Title:  A movie that's about Schmidt.  It is.  Good title.

Mother's Rule (Always Say Something Good About Everything):  Jack Nicholson seems like he'd be a good, dedicated family man.

The Pros: Excellent acting, interesting story.

The Cons: Maybe a bit long for some people (about 2 hours), but it doesn't seem long.