Gilbert Grape is a small-town young man with a lot of responsibility. Chief among his concerns are his mother, who is so overweight that she can't leave the house, and his mentally impaired younger brother, Arnie, who has a knack for finding trouble. Settled into a job at a grocery store and an ongoing affair with local woman Betty Carver, Gilbert finally has his life shaken up by the free-spirited Becky.
Gilbert Grape is a small-town young man with a lot of responsibility. Chief among his concerns are his mother, who is so overweight that she can't leave the house, and his mentally impaired younger brother, Arnie, who has a knack for finding trouble. Settled into a job at a grocery store and an ongoing affair with local woman Betty Carver, Gilbert finally has his life shaken up by the free-spirited Becky.
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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 s...
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 wor...
**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 moth...