I took last week off from posting because it was my birthday and my gift to myself was not watching depressing-ass movies like this one.
Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) hates being stuck in a one-horse town. He just keeps going through the motions, never actually living, taking care of his developmentally disabled brother (Leonardo DiCaprio) in the crumbling house his father died in while his mother (Darlene Cates) is lost to her grief, and his two sisters Amy (Laura Harrington) and Ellen (Mary Kate Schellhardt), cope in their own ways. The arrival of an out-of-town girl (Juliette Lewis) is the first thing that has giving Gilbert some spark of life once more, leading him to question his quiet desperation.
There is a lot about grief and sublimating your personal desire for the good of your family, but it comes off as hollow. Women do that shit all the time. In fact, his sister Amy performs exactly as much, if not more, labor as Gilbert with zero focus on her. Lewis is the precursor to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, appearing as a fey waif dispensing nonjudgmental chaste sweetness and advice while asking nothing of the protagonist. The whole movie feels like some dude whining about how life is so haaaaaaard. And the ending is some serious WTFery. It's presented as a happily-ever-after but falls apart if you give it more than ten seconds of thought.
Yes, DiCaprio probably should have won the Oscar. But then we wouldn't have that great line in Tropic Thunder, so there. Yeah, you know which one.
What's Eating Gilbert Grape is streaming on HBO Max. I guess watch it before the service implodes.
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