What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)

Peter McGinn

7.0

Dec 11, 2021

I recently watched this movie again after many years, and was surprised how many details I had forgotten. It features a great ensemble cast who seem to mostly share a screen rapport. Leonardo DiCaprio previews his future star career with a stellar performance as the difficult Arnie. I thought the scene where husband Mr. Carver comes home from work and obsesses over the burnt cookies and the unused swimming pool was silly and a bad fit for the film, especially consider what came after the scene. Meanwhile the two sisters were great characters: they were emotional when the situation called fo…

Filipe Manuel Neto

3.0

Nov 27, 2022

**A rather conventional and average family drama, where DiCaprio and Depp's performances turn out to be the only truly worthy note.** Sometimes, what makes a film remarkable is the extraordinary performance of an actor, and that becomes even more admirable when that actor is extremely young. That's what we have in this film, a conventional family drama, where a young adult tries to live his life as normally as possible while having to take care of everyone around him, particularly his mother, who is morbidly obese and depressed, and his younger brother, who has a mental problem that the mov…

GenerationofSwine

10.0

Jan 11, 2023

So, I had no idea who Leonardo was when I saw this back in the 90s, it was before Titanic, before he made it big, and I thought they hired an intellectually disabled man to play the part. And it dropped in '93 so that would make Dicaprio about 19? Maybe 18 when they made it? I doubt they would give an Oscar to a kid that young, but see that he's CLEARLY not Intellectually Disabled and how believable he was, well, that's probably one of the best performances I've seen. That was Oscar worthy. Besides that, it was really a Johnny Depp vehicle... as much as a 90s indy film can be, and he…