One of the main difficulties the family is having concerns Arnie Grape (DiCaprio), who is developmentally disabled this creates a great many problems for everyone involved, especially the multiple times he climbs the town water tower and refuses to come down for anyone except his brother Gilbert. Picking up a few years after the suicide of Gilbert's father, we see its impact on everyone involved. The story deals with the Grape household and their friends and acquaintances from Endora, Iowa. It stars Johnny Depp as the eponymous Gilbert Grape, with Juliette Lewis and Leonardo DiCaprio in supporting roles. MPAA rating: PG-13, for “elements of mature subject matter.” Times guidelines: It includes some mild sexual situations and scenes of Arnie climbing a water tower that may be frightening to small children.What's Eating Gilbert Grape is a 1993 drama film written by Peter Hedges, based on his novel of the same name, and directed by Lasse Hallström. Screenplay by Peter Hedges, based on his novel. Executive producers Lasse Hallstrom, Alan C. The filmmakers and just about everybody else in the cast head straight for it.Ī Paramount release of a Matalon Teper Ohlsson production. He’s such a rigorously honest actor that he avoids all the obvious hokum. DiCaprio, who was also seen this year in “This Boy’s Life,” works with the kind of minute clinical observation that Dustin Hoffman used in “Rain Man.” As far as it goes, DiCaprio’s performance is astonishing, but its very authenticity is a little off-putting. Most of the credit for that goes to DiCaprio’s performance.Īctually, it hardly seems like a performance. The relationship between Gilbert and Arnie has “Of Mice and Men” vibes, but it strikes a responsive chord in a way that the rest of the film doesn’t. (When Momma gets into the family car, there’s a shot of it puttering down the road tipped to one side that gets a big laugh.) There’s nothing cruel in their approach, but there’s something a bit opportunistic: They want extra points from the audience for being humanitarians. They wring laughs out of the Grapes predicament, but they also try to wring tears. Hallstrom and Hedges are satirizing small-town life, but they’re also canonizing it. Reilly) dreams of opening up a local Burger Barn Bobby (Crispin Glover), the undertaker’s son, sizes up the populace as if he were already measuring their coffins. That’s the way it usually is with these whimsical fables: “Normal” loses out to nutty every time.īetty (Mary Steenburgen), a love-starved housewife, lusts after Gilbert while her husband (Kevin Tighe) is out of the house she keeps calling into the grocery store where Gilbert works for some personal delivery service. The Grapes turn out to be-surprise, surprise-among the most levelheaded in town. Their small-town “normality” is the dippiest thing about them. Hallstrom and screenwriter Peter Hedges, adapting his novel, people the small Iowa town with a crotchety assortment of harmless eccentrics. “Gilbert Grape” and “Benny & Joon” serve as lullabies for the dysfunctional family generation-that’s the core of their popularity. We will reach the Promised Land if only we can “accept” ourselves and our families. Movies like these convert despair and mental illness into folksy uplifting anecdotes. “Benny & Joon” was a surprise hit earlier this year and “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” (selected theaters) could almost serve as that film’s companion piece. Quirky, heartfelt whimsy seems to be making a comeback in the movies. Gilbert’s two sisters (Laura Harrington and Mary Kate Schellhardt) moan and grouse about their lives. She hasn’t left the house in seven years. His mother (Darlene Cates, who was, in fact, discovered on a TV talk show about overweight women) tips the scale at about 500 pounds and camps out in the living room while her meals are wheeled in to her. Younger brother Arnie (Leonardo DiCaprio), soon to turn 18, is mentally disabled, possibly autistic and wasn’t expected to last beyond his 10th birthday. Their heartbreak began years ago with the suicide of Gilbert’s father. The Grapes live together in a ramshackle homestead on an isolated patch of acreage in small-town Iowa. He’s the family savior who neglects to save himself. With so much nuttiness crowding in on him, he holds a steady course. Gilbert (Johnny Depp), the brother who holds it all together for his brood in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” has a gift for sanity. The Grape family is like an entire week of guests on “Donahue” or “Oprah.” They’re dysfunctionally functional-by all rights their lives should be disastrous but somehow everything comes out OK.
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