Nurse Betty is the hugest movie of 2000.

Of course, I could just be saying this because I had to sit in the front row of the theater when I saw it. For a movie that's not Star Wars and doesn't feature any Wayans brothers, I couldn't believe that a Sunday matinee show was full to capacity ten minutes before the show started. I guess that's what you get when you release a movie with low stinkage potential at the same time as The Watcher and Highlander: Endgame.

Nurse Betty is the story of Renée Zellweger's noble struggle to open her eyes far enough for us to tell what color they are. No! It's the story of a woman, a soap opera, a murder, and the guy from Talk Soup.

Don't argue. I don't care how long it's been or how many jobs he's had since then, every person who had cable in the mid-'90s will always see Greg Kinnear as "the Talk Soup guy."

• Sabrina - "Hey! The Talk Soup guy is in a movie!"
• As Good as it Gets - "Hey! The Talk Soup guy is gay!"
• Mystery Men - "Is the Talk Soup guy good looking enough to play Captain Amazing?"
• Nurse Betty - "Is the Talk Soup guy good looking enough to play Captain Amazing again?"

Unfortunately for poor sweet Betty, she's not married to the Talk Soup guy. She's married to Del, the adulterous, redneck, mullet-wearing, hate magnet who you can tell is introduced just to be killed. In the first ten minutes he's on the screen, he pokes his secretary, yells at poor sweet Betty, forgets her birthday, and wipes his mouth on the curtains. On the curtains. How could they possibly NOT be setting this guy up to sleep with the fishes?

It's kind of the same maneuver as using Nazis as the villains in your movie. You don't have to do any work establishing them as bad guys. You just slap a swastika and a mustache on a guy, and BAM, you can have your hero start kicking his ass right at the beginning of the first reel. The audience doesn't think to themselves, "Why is he beating up that poor man?" they think "YEAH! Knock the sauerkraut out of that genocidal bastard, Indy!"

If you wipe your mouth on the curtains, you're as good as a Nazi in my book.

Just when you can't stand Del anymore, Morgan Freeman and his kaiser roll face show up with Chris Rock and his car-door sized teeth and they brutally lay some smack down on his dumb ass, Native American style.

Poor sweet Betty sees the whole gruesome incident from the next room, during the commercial break of her favorite ongoing daytime drama A Reason to Love.

Wait, I don't think I'm doing it justice. A Reason to Love isn't just poor sweet Betty's favorite show, it's more like an obsession. A whole most-people-who-like-a-show-this-much-speak-Klingon kind of deal.

Not that I can argue, I suppose. I mean, the show stars Asian Playmate Sung Hi Lee as Nurse Jasmine. Wow. I can't speak for poor sweet Betty, but I know A Reason to Love would keep me off the streets in the afternoon, boy howdy.

Anyway, poor, sweet Betty sees her husband get killed all nasty-like right in her own kitchen, and the trauma from the experience warps her poor, sweet mind and blurs the lines between fiction and reality (just like violent cartoons do to kids). In a whirling spiral of mental collapse, poor, sweet Betty suddenly believes that the world of A Reason to Live is reality, and wackiness ensues.

Wait, let me get this straight. Renée Zellweger is disturbed to the point of psychosis over murder?! She has sex with Jim Carrey for cryin' out loud! How can witnessing a murder even be in the same ballpark of mental disturbance as boinking Ace Ventura? Can you imagine?

"Hold on, Sugar! Daddy's got a sweet tooth tonight! Do you mind if I ass your ass a few questions? I'm goin' in! Bawoooooooga! Bawoooooooga! Dive dive dive! If I'm not done in five minutes... just wait longer! The pen is blue, the pen is blue, the goddamn pen is blue! Hohhh-hEEEE! Hohhh-hEEE! Somebody STOP me!... Hgk-g-BWALALALALAALA!... Smokin'."

Actually I guess the concept of a personality dementia caused by the viewing of a brutal murder isn't too far fetched. One time when I was in the fifth grade I saw a big floppy puppy get hit by a pick up truck right in front of my school. It was just bounding around, all brown and furry with big black glassy eyes, right at the apex of "trip over its own ears" cuteness, when all the sudden THUD THUD *arrf!*

The guy didn't even stop driving. He just kept on going. I was devastated. For two weeks I took on the persona of Sport-One from the Bionic Six. I got over it when the mutant kid who had been held back a grade hit me in the face with a softball in gym class, permanently removing any and all notions that I was a cybernetically enhanced athletic hero.

Anyway, when all was said and done, I thought Nurse Betty was a really happy movie. Like, the kind of thing where you come out with a big ol' "I just ate a whole crapload of ice cream" smile on your face. Okay, sure, there's the murder and the mayhem and all, but who cares. It's still super happy. And what else are you going to see this weekend? The Art of War? Please.

I like how Betty can perform the procedure that she does in the ambulance because she had seen it once on TV.

As soon as I saw that, all I could think of was any given doctor on any given episode of E.R. saying, "We're gonna have to intibate! I'm going to put a tube down your throat that will help you to breathe!"

I swear, they do that at least four times in every episode. I think I could intibate someone if I had to just from watching one season. There should be a drinking game.

Tube down throat = Shot of gin down throat.

And what about how poor, sweet Betty gets to stay with Rosa indefinitely because she saved her brother. Brother, right? I think it was her brother. He doesn't show up again in the movie. Anyway, she just gets to stay there forever, even though she annoys the crap out of Rosa. Because we all know how patient Latin women can be.

It's like in Camelot, how Pellinore just shows up at the castle one day in the first act to say hi, and then the next act is like seven years later and he's still just chillin' in the guest room. Still, that was a whole castle... Rosa had a one bedroom apartment and... oh forget it. This train of thought isn't even interesting to me.

I'm gonna go watch Talk Soup.