BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – Flanked by a trio of the freshest young actors in contemporary film, Jack Nicholson seems to relish his status as Hollywood’s resident lovable rogue.

Since his heyday as counterculture radical in landmark movies such as “Easy Rider,” “Five Easy Pieces” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Nicholson has lived a high-profile playboy’s life and settled into a kind of elder rebel-emeritus status on screen, burnished by the patina of his bad-boy past and his three acting Oscars.

Jack Nicholson

If there’s a mischievous twinkle in his eyes when he talks about his latest role as a “cuddly shark” in writer-director James L. Brooks’ “How Do You Know,” it is masked by his ubiquitous, signature shades. But when Nicholson talks about working again with Brooks or hanging out and acting with co-stars Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson and Paul Rudd, there’s a weathered warmth in his voice that belies his hipster cool.

“It’s a privilege to work with Jim. He’s probably one of the best screenwriters in the world, and you just get great material and he can always cast wonderful actors. Just look at us all,” Nicholson said, gesturing grandly to his young co-stars during a press conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Central Park hosted by Columbia Pictures.

With Brooks on one side and Witherspoon, Wilson and Rudd on the other, Nicholson held court in a sense as he talked about Brooks’ new romantic comedy. In it, he plays a deeply flawed father and sharky business mogul trying to balance his love for his son with his instincts for self-preservation. Nicholson’s bond with Brooks goes way back to his Oscar-winning performances in “Terms of Endearment” and “As Good As It Gets,” sandwiched between a memorable turn in “Broadcast News.” (Nicholson’s other Oscar, his first, came for Milos Forman’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1976.)

In “How Do You Know,” Nicholson is essentially in a supporting role – but one that fits him like a tailored suit. He plays Charles, an oily industrialist whose company is under federal investigation for fraud. Unfortunately, blame for Charles’ shady shenanigans falls on his decent but clueless son, George (Rudd), who recently took the corporate reins. As George’s life is falling apart, he stumbles into a romantic triangle with Witherspoon’s Lisa, an Olympic softball player in crisis at the end of her career, and Wilson’s Matty, a playboy pitcher for the Washington Nationals.

For his part, Nicholson’s charmingly caddish Charles occupies a subplot in which he hopes to help his son out of his legal jam while avoiding a lengthy, and well-deserved, prison sentence for himself.

“There are always different things that make parts difficult,” Nicholson said of his raffish character. “I’ve played a lot of bad or semi-bad people and you always have to be on the character’s side. I didn’t have any problem analyzing this character. It wasn’t really the tough part of it for me. I liked playing the father even though he’s not a great father, but I think you can see that he really does care even though he chooses business over his own son. He really didn’t think that he was doing that much wrong. I was a little worried about that myself since I feel like I am a loveable shark. Those are the kinds of things that you have to finesse.”

Brooks said he wrote the character as a personification of a certain kind of predator afoot in America’s financial jungles.

“Everything that’s been going on (in the economy) has been an attack on our personhoods. That shark that you’re talking about is representative of a certain kind of American businessman. I think he’s typical,” Brooks said.

“I am someone who’s obsessive about specifics and detail and I couldn’t pick a business to put up front,” the director continued. “Then I realized that Jack’s character is representative of the whole breed. And also, I realized that so much has gone wrong, and our trust has been eroded to such an extent by the absence of real role models anyplace in our lives, that the last holdout is people needing each other and holding hands and taking it on together. I sort of felt that when I wrote this.”

Nicholson, 73, said Brooks is the kind of director that makes him excited to keep making movies.

“With Jim you have to remember that he writes comedies like nobody else,” the actor said. “I mean, you’re dealing with life, death, business crime, fatherhood, motherhood, all these very serious topics and everything is funny at the same time. It has truth and it’s funny, but what he attacks to begin with is where it’s really distinct if you reviewed it – cancer, news, all this kind of thing. And I know it’s the goal he sets himself. He sets himself very interesting goals.

“Like, I remember the one that I particularly liked was in ‘As Good As It Gets.’ He says, ‘Number one, I want to write a part for the dog.’ He said, ‘I also want (the dog) to get a specific laugh based on language.’ So I mean he just picks out really hard things to do and then it’s supposed to look easy, kind of like Fred Astaire, but where he starts is always amazing to me.”

After a stellar career that has featured the above-mention films as well as era-defining movies such as “The Shining,” “Prizzi’s Honor,” “A Few Good Men,” “The Departed” and “The Bucket List,” Nicholson said he really doesn’t have anything left to prove. So he picks the roles he does take on very carefully.

“I’m kind of a guy that likes to prove things and all my life when I’ve said, ‘I’m so sick of (working),” and everyone always said, ‘Oh, God, man. You couldn’t not work.’ Well, I’m kind of proving them wrong. I read a lot of scripts and so I feel like I do a lot of movies and stuff, but they’re all the same. I like not working. I know that’s hideous, blasphemous, but I really do. I think I’ve started to infect others, young guys. I had a conversation with Leo (DiCaprio) and he said, ‘I love not working.’ I said, ‘See what I mean?’ I don’t really want to infect him.”

So, what does he do when he’s not working?

“It’s a press conference and I like to give great answers, but I just like getting up sometimes between eleven and one,” he said hesitantly. “It’s not movie hours unless you’re doing night movies. I play golf. I have a couple of kids in college and so I’m on the phone a lot. I see my pals. Various women around. Talk to my congressman. Go to funerals.”

What about rooting for his beloved Los Angeles Lakers?

“That’s more of a job,” Nicholson said with that patented bad-boy grin. “I have to be there (at courtside).”

But what is it that he still loves about making movies?

“Travel. Beautiful women. Excellent compatriots. Drinking pals. It’s very exciting. It’s just an exciting business,” Nicholson said. “We’ve all been doing it a while. I think we all get nervous, we get wild and that should be all I say, I think.”

The cosmic question at the heart of James L. Brooks’ latest, appealingly quirky romantic comedy is “How Do You Know.”

Owen Wilson

Although the writer-director of such grown-up comedies as “Broadcast News,” “As Good As It Gets” and “Spanglish” fails to punctuate his latest properly (something to do with an old Hollywood superstition about an ill fate for movies with question marks in their titles), he does offer up some pointed and poignant inquiries into the nature of love, romantic fate and commitment.

“How Do You Know,” like most of Brooks’ so-called “dramadies,” features decent but flawed characters and a messy, loose-ends plotline that aptly reflects modern life with all its funny and heartbreaking imperfections.

Paul Rudd

The unspoken extension of the film’s title query is: how do you know when you’re really, truly in love?

And Brooks employs a well-scrubbed trio of highly likable, dazzlingly photogenic and apparently expensive stars (reported payroll: $50 million) to pursue that question through a thoughtful and complex if meandering narrative.

It all starts as we meet Lisa (Reese Witherspoon, dithering but sexy), an Olympic-caliber softball player who, at 27, is unceremoniously cut from the U.S. national team. Uncertain about her future, and equally uncertain about her romantic fling with playboy Washington Nationals pitcher Matty (Owen Wilson, a charming rascal), Lisa agrees to a quicky blind date with businessman George (Paul Rudd, a likable everyman).

George has just received word that he’s about to be indicted for fraud for some dubious doings at the corporation whose head job he’s just inherited from his wheeler-dealer father Charles (Jack Nicholson playing, well, Jack Nicholson).

Reese Witherspoon

Naturally, the date between these two distracted young people is a disaster. But, something about George’s vulnerability and decency sticks with Lisa. And something about Matty’s guileless honesty and womanizing past leaves her with deep doubts about their relationship. And so an offbeat love triangle develops – Lisa slightly indifferent to prospects of love; Matty willing to settle down with Lisa despite the bounties of his single life; George gently viewing Lisa as a lifeline to sanity.

Meanwhile, in a pithy subplot, George’s morally slippery father struggles to come to grips with his guilt, his horror at going to prison and his love for his clueless and innocent son.

Certainly, Brooks knows how to create memorable, offbeat characters and place them in stories that deliver plenty of smart laughs, along with an undercurrent of social timeliness and heart-tugging drama. As a writer, director and producer, Brooks has won three Oscars (for “Terms of Endearment”) and 18 Emmy Awards (for his work on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Taxi” “The Tracey Ullman Show” and “The Simpsons”) essentially doing just that.

But his stories are hard to categorize because they don’t quite fit the standard romantic comedy mold. Their characters are too idiosyncratic, their plot turns too unpredictable, their conclusions too open-ended. In other words, as he does in “How do You Know,” Brooks turns formula upside down and shakes out something original and true.

How do you know when you’ve seen a James L. Brooks movie? You’re left thinking about it and marveling at its wondrous foibles long after you’ve left the theater.

- Dennis King

“How Do You Know”

PG-13
1:56
3 stars
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd, Kathryn Hahn
(sexual content and some strong language)

Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd

NEW YORK – James L. Brooks’ offbeat romantic comedy “How Do You Know” gets moving with a disastrous blind date between distracted characters played by Reese Witherspoon and Paul Rudd. The fidgety, nearly speechless date most likely constitutes every single person’s idea of dating hell.

Witherspoon and Rudd were asked to recall their own real-life worst dates during press interviews prior to the film’s release by Columbia Pictures.

Witherspoon, smart, blond and adorable, clearly had very little experience to draw from as she furrowed her brow and searched for an answer.

“I had someone correct my grammar on a blind date, and I knew in the first ten minutes that the date was over,” she finally revealed. “Yeah, you just don’t correct someone’s grammar.”

Does she remember what she said wrong?

“I don’t know,” she said brightly. “I’m from Tennessee. I probably say everything wrong. I probably said ain’t or something.”

Rudd, on the other hand, seemed to take a guy’s-guy relish in recounting his worst dating nightmare.

“A friend and I went on a double date with these two girls and uh, it started off we were trying to impress the girls and make each other laugh,” Rudd recalled. “And it started out innocently enough with my friend kicking his shoe 30 feet in the air as we’re walking down the street. And it really struck me as funny.

“So then I try to outdo him. I jumped on a mailbox or something, and each thing kept escalating,” he said. “The girls didn’t laugh at any of this. But it ended finally as I was driving, we were driving home, I had a Jeep at the time. And I thought it would be funny if, in the middle of a conversation, I’d jump out of the Jeep and run alongside, keep the conversation going as if it was normal.

“But I didn’t take into account that when you’re going slow in a car, it’s still really fast,” he said with a wry shrug. “I was in the middle of the conversation and stepped out of the car and fell so hard on the pavement, I ripped my jeans and cut up my hands and felt the tire whoosh past my head.

“And I looked up and in a split second the car was already 50 feet in front of me going toward a tree. They looked completely shellshocked, and I felt so stupid. And then we just drove home in silence. And that was the only date I had with that girl.”

How old was he at the time?

“In my late twenties,” Rudd said sheepishly. “Old enough to know better.”

- Dennis King

BY GENE TRIPLETT

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Two burning questions were being pondered at a recent news conference promoting “Dinner for Schmucks”:

First, how can you avoid being mean-spirited when you’re doing a comedy about making fun of people?

Second, what’s the true definition of “schmuck?”

“My grandfather used to call me a schmuck all the time,” Paul Rudd said in response to the second question.

“I thought it was a very intriguing story line,” Steve Carell said, responding to the first inquiry. “And I think it says something very kind, ultimately, and that’s what I responded to. I think it’s a very kind story and a great relationship between these two characters.”

Carell and Rudd (who’ve worked together in “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”) play two men who form an unlikely friendship in “Dinner for Schmucks,” a wildly absurdist comedy from director Jay Roach (of “Austin Powers” and “Fockers” fame) based on the French film by Francis Veber, “Le Diner de Cons” (“The Dinner Game”).

Rudd plays Tim Conrad, an underling financial analyst who’s targeted for promotion, if he can meet the requirements of a monthly dinner at the mansion of his boss (Bruce Greenwood): He has to bring along the weirdest buffoon he can find.

At first, Tim’s conscience tells him that’s a pretty “messed up” thing to do, until he (literally) runs into Barry Speck, a geeky IRS employee whose hobby is stuffing dead mice, dressing them up in tiny human outfits and placing them in miniature scenarios resembling famous works of art, events in history or even his own life as he wishes it could be.

Tim’s conscience is forgotten. This is too good to pass up. He invites Barry to join the roster of rejects at the dinner party, and the grateful amateur taxidermist is honored, completely unaware that he’s about to be held up as an object for laughter and ridicule.

But the plan backfires when the well-meaning Barry, thinking he’s found a new best friend, unintentionally turns Tim’s life upside down. Ultimately, a guilt-ridden Tim begins to realize who the real “schmucks” are around the dining room table.

“We loved the original French movie, and we knew obviously that our version was going to be very different,” said David Guion, who co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Handelman. “But there was one that we did want to keep, and I think Steve mentioned it earlier, which is that sense of vulnerability and heart in that main character. That was something that was very key to us, because I think the movie without that could become potentially mean-spirited, and I think it was very important to us that it not be that.”

Someone asked if the role posed a challenge for Carell.

“The most challenging aspect of this was when we shot a scene where Paul had injured his back,” Carell said with a laugh. “We shot it for about a day and a half, and I had to hug Paul for a day and a half.”

“That’s a challenge for anyone,” Rudd agreed.

Someone else asked whether Carell derived any secret enjoyment out of playing with the mice in the dioramas created by the creature effects team of Stephen, Charles and Edward Chiodo (“Team America: World Police,” “Elf”).

“Oh, not so secret,” Carell said. “I was astounded by the detail in those mice dioramas. The man-hours and the attention to detail and the commitment to those dioramas … and I think, honestly, things like that really help you with a character. Because to sit in a room with all those and to look at how meticulously they’ve been put together really informs the character a lot. It really tells you a lot about who this guy is and his own attention to detail. So, I was very thankful and grateful to them for how exquisite those dioramas were.

“I hope at some point to own one for my house,” Carell said in all seriousness. “And I don’t know whether it’s the Ben Franklin or the Evel Knievel, but I would love to have a mouse diorama in my own home, displayed proudly.”

But what does all this have to do with “schmucks,” someone asked again, noting that the word has never been used in the title of a major motion picture before?

“For me, it’s kind of an ideal word for what the story is about because in modern usages it has two different meanings, like, ‘don’t be a schmuck’ can mean ‘don’t be a jerk,’ which is what Paul Rudd’s character is going through, and ‘don’t be an idiot,’ which is what Steve Carell is going through,” Roach said.

“And then in the end it kind of switches, because you find out Paul Rudd’s character is the one who’s kind of living in a deluded reality, and that Steve’s character is actually much wiser than he (seems) to be. So that, to me, is a funny word to say, but it also resonated across what the two character were about, what seemed to be providing the best conflict.”

But, the reporter insisted, the word “schmuck” also has another meaning, derived from the Yiddish, which some people might find offensive.

“Well, go right to the Jew,” Rudd said. “… It means hot dogs.”

Travel and accommodations provided by Paramount Pictures.