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Wild At Heart (1990)

tomatometer

44

Average Rating: 5.3/10
Critic Reviews: 9
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 5

No consensus yet.

audience

80

liked it
Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 41,925

My Rating

Movie Info

Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern play a pair of lovers on the run in David Lynch's surrealist road movie Wild at Heart. Cage's Sailor Ripley is a violent ex-convict with an Elvis Presley fixation who falls in love with Dern's Lula Pace Fortune, the daughter of a rich, but mentally unstable, Southern belle named Marietta (Diane Ladd, Dern's real-life mother). Just after Sailor is released from prison, where he was jailed for brutally killing one of Marietta's thugs, he and Lula take off on a wild

R,

Drama, Mystery & Suspense, Comedy

David Lynch

Dec 7, 2004

Media Home Entertainment

Cast

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All Critics (44) | Top Critics (10) | Fresh (33) | Rotten (15) | DVD (27)

Even the title is a letdown, somehow.

September 17, 2008 Full Review Source: Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
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Joltingly violent, wickedly funny and rivetingly erotic.

September 17, 2008 Full Review Source: Variety
Variety
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Barry Gifford's beautifully written picaresque novel about southern lovers on the run, though essentially literary, could have worked as a movie had David Lynch shown some fidelity to the realistic context.

September 17, 2008 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader
Chicago Reader
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Funny, scary and brilliantly cinematic.

January 26, 2006 Full Review Source: Time Out
Time Out
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Though Miss Dern and Mr. Cage are constantly upstaged by the rest of the movie, they triumph.

May 20, 2003 Full Review Source: New York Times
New York Times
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Lynch's kinky fairy tale is a triumph of startling images and comic invention.

May 12, 2001
Rolling Stone
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Should be perceived as a wicked comedy.

February 10, 2013 Full Review Source: Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Ozus' World Movie Reviews

The result's mostly empty at heart and hollow on top.

September 17, 2008 Full Review Source: Film4

This winner of the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or is a lunatic road movie seething with the same dark intensity that animates director Lynch's earlier work.

September 17, 2008 Full Review Source: TV Guide's Movie Guide
TV Guide's Movie Guide

It's not a pleasant film by any definition, and it's not remotely for everyone, but it's true to Lynch's vision.

July 23, 2007 Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com
eFilmCritic.com

Lynch's paean to Wizard of Oz divided critics when it premeiered at Cannes, and it never found an audience beyond the helmer's fans who enjoyed the fable's couple (Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern) taking their own Yellow Brick Road in search of the wizard

December 20, 2006 Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com
EmanuelLevy.Com

Not for the weak of heart, one of the best Lynchian outings with some fantastically memorable dialogue.

December 6, 2005 Full Review Source: Empire Magazine
Empire Magazine

Wild at Heart feels belabored, and it lacks the resonance and power with which the best, most unfiltered passages of Lynch's work vibrate.

June 12, 2005 Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com
Filmcritic.com

David Lynch does it again.....a hot, heavy, hellish movie

March 11, 2005
Film Threat

Audience Reviews for Wild At Heart

A good, but not terrific film. Very interesting surrealist road movie, but exist others David Lynch's film that deserve the Golden Palm.
September 14, 2012
Lucas Martins

Super Reviewer

Wild At Heart might be David Lynch's worst film to date. It is so over the top, which is how Lynch clearly meant it to be, that after fifteen minutes into this film you feel just annoyed about it's noisy soundtrack, even louder characters and plot that does not exist.
This is just two hours long road movie with pointless side plots, characters that are only odd for the sake of being odd and graphic images that for me just felt unnecessary. Wild At Heart has some curious elements in it and it has echoes of that typically brooding atmosphere which so many other Lynch films also does. Sad fact is that there is no interesting characters here or anybody or anything to care about.
And talk about annoying. Diane Ladd is beyond hysterical as a sadistic mother here and every scene she is in just becomes frustrating to watch. Laura Dern and Harry Dean Stanton give us film's better performances, but even their perfromances are nothing more than ok.
There are heavy references of Wizard of Oz here and Lynch is leaning towards fantasy and more comical approach. Nothing still takes away the fact that Wild At Heart is all over the place. It is a fragmented and unpleasantly violent experience which ends up being more boring to watch than curiosity.
In Lynch's filmography this certainly is one of his weakest or possibly even the most weakest work to date.
July 28, 2012
emilkakko

Super Reviewer

    1. Bobby Peru: It`s full of dummies, dummy!
    – Submitted by steve l (2 months ago)
    1. Sailor Ripley: I guess I started smokin' when I was about four. My Mama was already dead by then from lung cancer.
    – Submitted by Frances H (5 months ago)
    1. Lula Pace Fortune: One of these mornins the sun's gonna come up and burn a hole through the planet like an electrical exray.
    2. Sailor Ripley: That ain't never gonna happen, honey. At least, not in our lifetime. By then they'll be drivin' Buicks to the moon.
    – Submitted by Frances H (5 months ago)
    1. Sailor Ripley: Did I ever tell ya that this here jacket represents a symbol of my individuality, and my belief in personal freedom?
    2. Lula Pace Fortune: About fifty thousand times.
    – Submitted by Frank M (8 months ago)
    1. Lula Pace Fortune: This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top.
    – Submitted by Matheus C (23 months ago)

Discussion Forum

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Foreign Titles

  • Sailor et Lula (FR)
  • Corazón salvaje (ES)
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