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Charmingly offbeat and low-key, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? focuses on the plight of its eponymous protagonist, a young man who’d love nothing more than to leave his dysfunctional family and sleepy rural community. But Gilbert, played with warmth and sensitivity by Johnny Depp, is restrained by a sense of duty to his morbidly obese mother (Darlene Cates) and mentally handicapped younger brother (Leonardo DiCaprio, who snagged an Oscar nomination for his eye-opening turn). He can’t bring himself to bolt, even when his older lover (Mary Steenburgen) announces that she’s going to leave him behind. Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom (Chocolat) exhibits a surprising affinity for small-town America, which he depicts in an occasionally unflattering but generally accurate manner. His efforts are most readily apparent in the performances of his principal players, who are uniformly excellent. Depp anchors the film, but DiCaprio and Juliette Lewis -- playing a trailer-park teen who gets Gilbert on the rebound -- provide rock-solid support, and Cates (a nonactor whom Hallstrom discovered on a talk show) is almost unbearably poignant as a character who’s as pitiable as she is unsympathetic. Neither as grotesque or flamboyant as other films that have traversed similar dramatic byways, Gilbert Grape lingers in memory, owing to the honesty with which it portrays the primary characters and the constricted world they inhabit. Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom's follow-up to the underrated Once Around earned far more attention than its predecessor thanks to the judicious casting of perennial thinking woman's heartthrob Johnny Depp and a certain up-and-coming thespian by the name of Leonardo DiCaprio. A prisoner of his dysfunctional family's broken dreams in tiny Endora, IA, Gilbert (Depp) serves as breadwinner and caretaker for his mother and siblings following his father's suicide and his older brother's defection. Momma (Darlene Cates) is a morbidly obese shut-in who hasn't left the house in seven years; her children include retarded Arnie (DiCaprio), who's about to turn 18 despite a host of negative medical forecasts, and terminally embarrassed Ellen (Mary Kate Schellhardt), who's emerging from an awkward adolescence. When he's not taking care of the difficult but tender Arnie, Gilbert spends his time fixing up the family's tattered farmhouse, working at a failing mom-and-pop grocery store and hanging with local misfits Bobby (Crispin Glover), an overly ambitious junior undertaker, and Tucker (John C. Reilly), a handyman who hankers after a job at the new burger franchise. Into this complicated but essentially unchanging social universe steps Becky (Juliette Lewis), a thoughtful young woman who's been escorting her nomadic grandmother from state to state in a mobile-home caravan. As Becky teaches Gilbert to finally consider his own happiness for a change, she disrupts both his family obligations and his long-running affair with a lonely housewife (Mary Steenburgen). Adapted by Peter Hedges from his own novel of the same name, What's Eating Gilbert Grape was the first and only film role for non-actress Cates, whom the filmmakers discovered on an episode of the Sally Jesse Raphael Show titled "Too Heavy to Leave Their House." Brian J. Dillard

Chicago Sun-Times

One of the most enchanting movies of the year. Roger Ebert

Austin Chronicle

All tics, flailings, and full-open, drooling laughter, DiCaprio seems to have captured the damaged heart and soul of Arnie Grape. Marc Savlov

Product Details

• UPC: 097360421248
• Source: PARAMOUNT
• Sales Rank: 3,400