ohbladioblahblog

I watched What’s Eating Gilbert Grape last night. I can’t believe it took me 15 years to finally watch it. I have always been a Johhny Depp fan going back to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092312/. (Though I found Richard Grieco was cuter.)

I really like WEGG. True of every Lasse Hallström movie I have seen, they are sweet and funny and sad. It was hard not to like Gilbert even when he made fun of his morbidly obese mother. Though he tried to spare her feelings when the floor was collapsing under her weight. I could understand when he got so angry with Arnie that he hit him. It’s not easy raising disabled kids. And Gilbert wasn’t Arnie’s dad but his brother. Amazing that he took most everything in stride including having to earn a living in a dying small town grocery store. He didn’t seem too excited when he had to make deliveries the the Carvers especially when Betty nearly attacked him when he got in the door.

The scene where Bonnie, the mother, finally leaves her house after 7 years to get Arnie out of jail could have been better. Do people really stop and stare and a fat woman? I have never seen anyone being so obvious before. But maybe that is how the family felt with those eyes upon them.

It was fitting that they burned that crumbling house down at the end. Did no one see the flames? Where they that far out of town? Then next we jump to almost a year later and they acted like it was the next day. What did they do for that year? Avoid jail for burning their dead mother?

Sometimes it’s best to enjoy the film and not think too much about it.