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intereact!Director: Lasse Hallström
Actors: Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Juliette Lewis, Mary Steenburgen, and Darlene Cates
Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Retail Price (not our price): $9.98
Release Date: 2001-11-17
Theatrical Release Date: 1993-12-25
Studio: Paramount
Run Time: 117 minutes
Format: Array
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Discs: 1
Editorial Reviews (supplied by Amazon.com):
1) Amazon.com
This is the movie that Leonardo DiCaprio received an Oscar nomination for, five years before Titanic. And, in fact, this is the movie that should have made him a star, he's so good in it. Based on the novel by Peter Hedges (who adapted his own book) and directed by Lasse Hallström (My Life as a Dog), this is the funny, moody tale of a young man named Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) who lives at home in a small town with his 500-pound Momma (beautifully played by nonpro Darlene Cates), his mentally retarded younger brother Arnie (DiCaprio, utterly convincing), and his sisters. Not a lot happens--Arnie keeps climbing a water tower and getting stuck; Gilbert is involved with a married woman (Mary Steenburgen), then meets a nice new girl in town who's closer to his age (Juliette Lewis). And that's exactly what makes this movie so much more than your run-of-the-mill Hollywood product: it's not about some mechanical, formulaic plot; it's about these characters, and it allows you to spend some time with them and get to know them. Depp may have started out as a TV teen idol on 21 Jump Street, but his feature film choices since then--in such wonderfully offbeat and diverse movies as Cry-Baby, Edward Scissorhands, Benny & Joon, Donnie Brasco--have made him one of the most interesting, unpredictable, and risk-taking young actors in American movies. --Jim Emerson
Customer Reviews (supplied by Amazon.com):
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5
1) What's Eating Gilbert Grape [Rating: 5 out of 5]
This was a great movie! Critics reviewed this as "wonderfully original" and I agree. Johnny Depp has such a wide variety of acting abilities and this is definitely no exception. Leonardo DiCaprio did a wonderful portrial of a mentally handicapped young man - very impressive. What a story! Probably not the ending that you would expect.2) Excellent Edition**GET IT** See the "greats" before they became so! [Rating: 5 out of 5]
What is now so wonderful about revisiting WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE after several years, is to see multi nominated Oscar performers Johnny Depp,Leonardo DiCaprio and Juliette Lewis when they were on their road to stardom.WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE? is one of those incredible ensemble acting pieces that required JUST the right kind of actors.It is interesting to note that Depp,DiCaprio and Lewis have all, at one time, been listed as Hollywood's "most intriguing actors"!.This, to me, lies the greatness and the heart of this touching 1993 look at confused,repressed and quirky people in a dead Texas town called Endora! Take my favorite director Lasse Hallstrom (The Cider House Rules (Miramax Collector's Series),Casanova) and Oscar winning screenplay writer Peter Hedges (About a Boy (Widescreen Edition), and Pieces of April...he always writes, with great tenderness, very conflicted characters!), and VOILA, you have a look back in time when the "great ones" were still yet to reach their pinnacle of success!GILBERT GRAPE has ALL the earmarks of that greatness to come.First off, if you have no patience with intimate films that have deliberate character development and no action, you may want to pass.If you relish great acting and a rising action story line, then read on!Gilbert is the second son of five on whom his entire family hangs! The oldest son flew the coup, the father committed suicide, the mother is a depressed obese and, the youngest son is a retarded boy who was not supposed to live, and the two sisters seem to have their own issues in life.Gilbert (expertly crafted by Depp) is the model of restraint and co-dependent behaviour as he cares for all of his family.But what is eating at Gilbert? He should be exploding any minute, but his feelings seem so repressed as he runs after his younger brother (DiCaprio- who received an Oscar nom),helps to deal with his Mother's depression and 500 pound+ obesity and also work in a dead end job as a grocery store stock boy.In fact, the only sign that Gilbert has any life in him, is when he delivers groceries to an older and married housewife (Oscar winner Mary Steenburgen,as only she could deliver this performance!)where Gilbert finds himself somewhat entrapped,but afraid to let go.Enter Becky, a passer-through Airstream trailer girl whose rig breaks down in Endora.It is this relationship that awakens Gilbert and the rest of the family to confront all of the repressed and suppressed feelings as a family that somehow functions.Every performance in this film is A+ and should be viewed for the quality of acting and adeptness at direction and screenplay.The Special Edition has wonderful interviews with the cast and director that give perspective of people who can now look back at the film and examine it with fresh perspective.One of the best Special Editions on DVD and well worth the $$$.3) The Collector's Edition of What's Eating Gilbert Grape is certainly worth buying [Rating: 5 out of 5]
I debated on whether to buy this DVD as I already had one of the original Gilbert Grapes I think this one was done in 2006. I am so glad I did it is well worth it. The extra's are great just to hear Johnny talk about it is enough, then you hear from Darlene and Mary. The directors commentary along with Peter Hedgers is really good. I hadn't read the book so hearing the author talking about the book along with the movie is very informative. Neither Lasse nor Peter had seen the movie in years so it was really fun to watch it with them...buy it.4) hit a soft spot for me [Rating: 5 out of 5]
i have an autistic family member and a friend's father told me to check this movie out.definitely can relate to a lot of things [not as extreme of course but...]. it's a very nice movie. Depp plays it well...nothing on the film deserves a complaint.dicaprio is incredible...i really wanted to tell him to shut up because he was so convincing. he was doing a great job.5) Unpredictable DiCaprio [Rating: 5 out of 5]
One of these films that are an essential step in the career of an actor. It was true for Leonardo DiCaprio who got his first Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for the role of a differently-abled kid . It is true he does a good job in that part and he is a brilliant couple with Johnny Depp as his bigger brother. The film is entertaining though on many other levels. The survival of a small town in the US at a time when big shopping malls are opening everywhere. These small towns are doomed to die sooner or later. Their only chance is to become suburban development projects and become the home of people working in the big city next door who want to live away from the hectic activity of the city and commute there every day. We are before this development in Endora. The second interest is the fate of a family in which there is a mentally disabled child. Here they have no opportunity to provide him with an education and some professional activity. So he is more or less attached to a member of his family and he is haunting if not even worse that brother of his, as well as the police and neighbors. It is never vicious but it is really bothering those who want to have peace and quiet. The place of mentally disabled people in our society is something difficult to envisage because they are necessarily a burden to normative people and a normative system that has to adapt to them and not the reverse. Today things have changed a lot, thanks to such films probably, definitely. Then the film attaches itself to showing the mother who is an extremely obese person, her shame, her humiliation, her lot that is close to an ordeal. The film shows how dependent she is on her own family, on her own children, the father having died a long time before. And the film tries to show her under the best light they can afford. On her disabled son's birthday, after having accepted to be introduced to her elder son's girl friend (a young woman who had to stop in Endora with her mother and their travelling bus for a couple of weeks because of the breakdown of the car they travel in), after climbing back up to the second floor bedroom of the house for the first time in many years and lying there on her back, she dies without any kind of pain or noise with her disabled son calling for her to wake up. The film though has a strange ending. The children decide to burn her in the house since she cannot be taken down. A domestic pyre for the mother and a complete liberation for the children who are scattered away now they are homeless. The burial of old civilizations, of the Hinduist tradition. Amazing. And yet it is not the end. A last scene shows how the elder brother is recuperated by his girlfriend who comes back to pick him up and away from Endora and by picking one she gets two because the disabled brother comes along too. That's what happens when a mechanical incident forces you to stop over in a lost village in the countryside for a couple of weeks. You get trapped in some kind of sentimental cage like the disabled brother's crickets in his glass jar where he raises them. A good decent softly entertaining film.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines