96 - What's Eating Gilbert Grape?

Connection To STEP BROTHERS - John C. Reilly and Mary Steenburgen.

So what is eating Gilbert Grape? A lot really... a dangerously obese mother who hasn't left the house in years, a brother with severe learning difficulties (who is about to turn 18 and wasn't expected to live past 10) and stuck as the "responsible" one in his family in a dead end town.

I should flashback a bit to when I first saw this, in my teen years while I was still at school, before seeing this I used to make jokes about a friends overweight mother - while his mother wasn't as heavy was the mother here - I guess the film told me not just people on their size, so there you go ladies and gentlemen films can make a difference.

How would I rate Gilbert Grape though? Well to me it's a well made films with some great characters but perhaps tries a little bit hard at times to pour it on and can be a bit obvious when trying to get you to feel the emotion it wants.

I'll talk about the two performances first that most people will take from this movie, firstly Leonardo DiCaprio as Gilbert's young brother Arnie - the aforementioned brother steals focus anytime he is on screen and proving you can go full retard (Tropic Thunder reference if you didn't know) if the performance is this good, he captures what Gilbert does say early in the film in his narration in "that some days you want to kill him" - giving you a really good overall feeling about what it would be like if you was caring for Arnie.

The other performance is Darlene Cates as the mother, who really was housebound for years and I think it was a talk show appearence that caught the eye of director Lasse Hallstrom in casting her, as a non-actor she does really well, to be a couple of her lines reading her awkward - but Hallstrom, whoever should have been the ones ironing them out - the films best emotional moment for me was when Arnie gets arrested for climbing the water tower one to many times and she lives the house for the first time.

The rest of the cast are pretty cool, Juliette Lewis perhaps gets the most underwritten character but works great with what she's got, John C. Reilly whose obsessed with a burger franchise coming to town and Crispin Glover as a mortuary assistant (perfect casting) are good as Gilbert's friends. Johnny Depp does carry the movie though, he is our avatar and don't think the movie would work quite as well.

Overall a very good film, that's it's main weaknesses might only bother me but this is little with a great cast who are all endlessly watchable.