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The Big Empty (2003)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:6
Fresh:4
Rotten:2
Average Rating:5.2/10
Runtime: 1 hr 34 mins
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: John Person (Jon Favreau) is a 30-something struggling actor living alone and facing eviction from his one room apartment in Hollywood. Behind on his rent and heavily in debt, he goes against his... John Person (Jon Favreau) is a 30-something struggling actor living alone and facing eviction from his one room apartment in Hollywood. Behind on his rent and heavily in debt, he goes against his better judgment- and that of his pretty neighbor Grace (Joey Lauren Adams)- and accepts an unsolicited offer from his strange neighbor Neely (Bud Cort) to courier a blue suitcase up to the desert truck stop of Baker, California. There, in the middle of nowhere, at a seedy motel in the shadow of The World's Largest Thermometer, he'll simply deliver the locked suitcase to a trucker called Cowboy (Sean Bean) and be paid twenty-seven thousand dollars in cold, hard cash. Seems like it’s easy money. But then John's given a loaded gun and told he must defend the blue suitcase with his life. On arrival in Baker, he discovers he's already missed the mysterious man and soon he's reluctantly mixed up with young local vixen Ruthie (Rachael Leigh Cook), her mother Stella (Darryl Hannah), Ruthie’s hot-headed jealous boyfriend Randy (Adam Beach) and paranoid, alien-obsessed locals. When special agent Banks (Kelsey Grammer) arrives at the local watering hole to question him about the murder and decapitation of his strange neighbor and hundreds of people recently gone missing, John realizes that he might be mixed up in something much more dangerous and bizarre than he ever imagined. Nothing is ever easy. Later that dark night, Cowboy violently appears and John finds himself caught somewhere between the surreal, the supernatural and the just plain weird. And when the final showdown begins, John is faced with a choice that could change his life forever. Has this whole town gone mad? Or are the loony locals, who John dismissed as being crazy, the only sane things about this strange parallel universe called The Big Empty? -- © Artisan Entertainment [More]
Starring: Rachael Leigh Cook, Sean Bean, Jon Favreau, Joey Lauren Adams
Starring: Rachael Leigh Cook, Sean Bean, Jon Favreau, Joey Lauren Adams, Adam Beach, Brent Briscoe, Bud Cort, Gary Farmer, Kelsey Grammer, Jon Gries, Daryl Hannah, Danny Trejo, Melora Walters
Director: Steve Anderson
Director: Steve Anderson
Screenwriter: Steve Anderson
Producer: Doug Mankoff, Gregg L. Daniel, Andrew Spaulding
Composer: Bryan Tyler
Studio: Artisan Entertainment
Reviews for The Big Empty
If any film is destined to find a cult audience on DVD, it's The Big Empty.
Thanks to Favreau, even the film’s most ridiculous detours carry a certain plausibility; he shines his indignities on and perseveres, and we can’t help but sympathize.
Anderson squanders the setting's potential and a cast of indie-movie all-stars in his muddled and weak feature.
The Big Empty is much more a romantic fable than Swingers, the singles comedy that established Favreau but has a similarly jovial, unpretentious charm.
Some may praise The Big Empty as a poor man's David Lynch-meets-The X-Files, but it's more of a starving homeless man's David Lynch-meets-The X-Files.
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