Throughout the film he never even hints at a 'performance’ and rather embodies the character fully. DiCaprio is masterful, joyous, vulnerable and truly believable as Arnie Grape. While the story of a small-town boy with obese mother trying to escape his humdrum life is one we’ve seen before many times (maybe not the obese mother part), the real triumph of “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” are the performances. I think I was very much of the Kirk Lazarus school of thinking regarding actors portraying disabilities on-screen.Įventually however I decided to give it a go and sat down to watch it and I was pleasantly surprised. Also, the prospect of watching Leonardo DiCaprio playing a boy with a developmental disability did not really appeal to me. I used to always get it confused with “The Basketball Diaries” for some reason and just never had any desire to see it. "What’s Eating Gilbert Grape" was always one of those films I’d classed under the ‘heard of but never actually seen’ category of life. Dear readers I give you “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”. It’s not the confession of a murderer, rather a young boy’s remorse at decapitating a locust.
Nearly got it “Push”, just slightly off in the end. McGuigan works his camera and armed with a better story he could have had something really special (see the recent episodes of the BBC’s “Sherlock” that he directed to illustrate that).Īh well, you can’t win them all. The action sequences and done extremely well and look fantastic. Shot on location, the film is vibrant and electric. Screenwriter David Bourla cobbles together plenty of narrative cliches to form the story and it suffers. “Push” seems confused about this and sort of comes off as a bit of a mess. Now I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that kind of limited character development so long as the film is aware of that and pushes the action. Really? Did they shoot the same script he read? Djimon Hounsou’s character for instance can probably be boiled down to three words cold-blooded badass. According to director Paul McGuigan on IMDB’s trivia page, part of the appeal of making “Push” was that “ though it was an action movie, the characters were very developed, much more so than in most such genre films.”
It’s just they’re not really massive parts.
Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, the unbelievable Djimon Hounsou the play their parts very well. Throughout all of this I wouldn’t place the fault in the cast. The frustrating element is what I’ve already highlighted. Forgettable fluff could be another form of description you could use. In fact you could even get away with calling it entertaining. Set the whole thing in Hong Kong and shoot on location so it looks amazing: nice touch.īut the screenplay, the characters: oh dear. Legions of different types of powers including Japanese guys who explode fish by screaming: cool idea. Psychic breed of heroes versus an evil corporation: cool idea. Oh you had so many good ideas, just couldn’t quite pull it off. The “X-Men” films had already been out, “Heroes” and “Fringe” were doing well on the little screen. Where’s the chicky-chicky who gets us all killed?
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