I've got a really great compliment for you, and it's true.

Carol Connelly: I'm so afraid you're about to say something awful.
Melvin Udall: Don't be pessimistic, it's not your style. Okay, here I go: Clearly, a mistake. I've got this, what - ailment? My doctor, a shrink that I used to go to all the time, he says that in fifty or sixty percent of the cases, a pill really helps. I *hate* pills, very dangerous thing, pills. Hate. I'm using the word "hate" here, about pills. Hate. My compliment is, that night when you came over and told me that you would never... well, you were there, you know what you said. Well, my compliment to you is, the next morning, I started taking the pills.
Carol Connelly: I don't quite get how that's a compliment for me.
Melvin Udall: You make me want to be a better man.
Carol Connelly: ...That's maybe the best compliment of my life.
Melvin Udall: Well, maybe I overshot a little, because I was aiming at just enough to keep you from walking out.

Plot: New York City. Melvin Udall, a cranky, bigoted, obsessive-compulsive writer, finds his life turned upside down when neighboring gay artist Simon is hospitalized and his dog is entrusted to Melvin. In addition, Carol, the only waitress who will tolerate him, must leave work to care for her sick son, making it impossible for Melvin to eat breakfast. The trials and tribulations of a compulsive writer, Melvin Udall. After his homosexual neighbor is brutally beaten, he is entrusted to the care of the neighbor's dog, with a difficult relationship with a waitress to add on top of that. What develops is a weekend trip/triangle between these three individuals, and together they learn the true meaning of "the sunny side of life”.

Have you met anyone recently who might loathe the very core of you?

Kay Eiffel : As Harold took a bite of Bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be ok. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true. And, so it was, a wristwatch saved Harold Crick.

Plot:

Harold Crick (Will Farrell) is an IRS auditor who almost compulsively measures, quantifies and rationalizes his life. Suddenly, he becomes aware of a voice narrating his life, "accurately and with a better vocabulary." The voice is that of a writer we learn is struggling with writer's block (Emma Thompson), mostly about the best way to make Harold die. When Harold overhears his impending doom, he takes action, and eventually makes his way to a professor of literary theory (Dustin Hoffman), who helps him understand the implications of the narrative life he is leading. The main story line seems to be around a woman he is auditing, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Realizing he could die at any moment, Harold begins to break free of his limited, orderly life, and joins Gyllenhaal in a romantic relationship. He tracks down Thompson and confronts her with the truth: if she writes about his death, then he will die. But Hoffman is convinced the novel must be written as intended, and Thompson herself is ambivalent. Crick himself reads the novel and encourages her to keep the original ending, which would kill him.