Movie Madness - What's Eating Gilbert Grape?

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

I'll flashback to something more personal for me related to this movie when I first saw it. Which was in my teen years while I was still at school before seeing this I used to make jokes about a friends overweight mother and while mother wasn't as heavy as the mother here - I guess the film told me not to judge people based on their size. So there you go ladies and gentlemen films can make a difference.

But how I would I rate Gilbert Grape? Well to me it's a well made film with some great characters but it does perhaps lay it on a little thick in getting you to feel the emotions it wants.

I'll talk about the two performances that people will remember most from the movie , firstly Leonardo DiCaprio as Gilbert's younger brother Arnie - the aforementioned brother - who steals focus anytime he is on screen and proving if you go "full retard" sometimes it works (that's a Tropic Thunder reference if you didn't know), the performance is that great and he really captures a line that Gilbert says early in the film "...some days you want to kill him" - giving you a great overall feeling what it would be like if you had a Arnie in your life. 

The other performance is Darlene Cates as his mother, who really was housebound for years and I think it was a talk show appearence that caught the eye of the director Lasse Hallstrom in casting her, as a non-actor she does really well, though there is a couple of line readings that are awkward that you would think that Hallstrom or whoever would have ironed them out. The films best emotional moment for me was when Arnie gets arrested for climbing the water tower one too many times and she leaves the house for the first time in years to get him including gawking from townsfolk.

The rest of the cast are pretty cool, Juliette Lewis perhaps gets the most underwritten role in the whole film but works with what she's got. There's also John C. Reilly obsessesed with a burger franchise coming to town and Crispin Glover in perfect casting as a mortuary assistant as Gilbert's friends. Johnny Depp does carry the film though, I don't think the film would have stuck together as well without him.

Overall a good film, verging on very good with it's main weaknesses only bothering me a little, but the film as so many memorable performances and characters that it's a film worth watching more then once.