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Big Bad Love (2002)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:58
Fresh:24
Rotten:34
Average Rating:5.4/10
Consensus: A boozy depiction of a struggling writer, Big Bad Love is too messy and self-indulgent.
Theatrical Release:Feb 22, 2002 Limited
Synopsis: BIG BAD LOVE brings to life the characters that populate Mississippi writer Larry Brown's short story collection of the same name. Leon Barlow (Arliss Howard) is a writer with a compulsion to drink... BIG BAD LOVE brings to life the characters that populate Mississippi writer Larry Brown's short story collection of the same name. Leon Barlow (Arliss Howard) is a writer with a compulsion to drink and a bathroom wall papered with his rejection letters. Powered by endless cases of beer, an undying desire for his estranged wife (Debra Winger), and his Vietnam War buddy Monroe (Paul Le Mat), he continually plugs away at his manual typewriter, full of anger and limitless hope that he will sell a story. Leon is suddenly forced to rethink his way of life, though, when tragedy strikes both a close friend and his young daughter. An obvious labor of love by writer/director/star Howard and producer/star (and wife of Howard) Debra Winger, BIG BAD LOVE succeeds at capturing the life the struggling writer, the fractured thought processes of the alcoholic, and the languorous pace of life in the rural south. Howard turns in a mannered, passionate performance, and the too-seldom seen Winger and Le Mat are both very welcome screen presences. Striking cinematography and a painstakingly chosen soundtrack also add greatly to this rewarding tale of friendship, tragedy, addiction, and ambition. [More]
Starring: Arliss Howard, Debra Winger, Rosanna Arquette, Paul Le Mat
Starring: Arliss Howard, Debra Winger, Rosanna Arquette, Paul Le Mat, Angie Dickinson, Sigourney Weaver, Michael Parks, Larry Brown, Matt Mitchell
Director: Arliss Howard
Director: Arliss Howard
Screenwriter: Arliss Howard, Jim Howard
Producer: Debra Winger
Composer: Tom Waits
Studio: IFC Films
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Reviews for Big Bad Love
This ambitious drama about a Vietnam vet trying to create fiction out of his troubled life and former marriage (to Debra Winger) is messy, rambling, and overlong.
Makes you wish you'd stayed at home with a book -- preferably one of Larry Brown's.
The very definition of what critics have come to term an “ambitious failure.”
Offhand, if you'd like to see some great imagery about writing, then you should by all means rent this and skip to the good parts.
The worst kind of independent; the one where actors play dress down hicks and ponderously mope around trying to strike lightning as captured by their 1970s predecessors
It's a drawling, slobbering, lovable run-on sentence of a film, a Southern Gothic with the emotional arc of its raw blues soundtrack.
Though you couldn't call Love a complete success, it's packed with talent and intelligence, wayward poetry and bluesy longing.
It retains enough moments of twangy gallows humour, mostly courtesy of Paul Le Mat as Leon's corpulent drinking buddy, to keep the film from becoming a bludgeoning experience.
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 78% 78% | The Hangover |
| 88% 88% | Inglourious Basterds |
| 66% 66% | Public Enemies |
| 24% 24% | G-Force |
| 44% 44% | Night at the Museum: B… |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 90% 90% | District 9 |
| 86% 86% | 500 Days of Summer |
| 63% 63% | Extract |
| 06% 06% | All About Steve |
| 78% 78% | It Might Get Loud |
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