The look of the film is great, but the pace and artsy flourishes throughout make this one the strange combination of boring and bizarre.
Comment
06/28/02
Big Bad Love (2002)
41
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:58
Fresh:24
Rotten:34
Average Rating:5.4/10
Consensus: A boozy depiction of a struggling writer, Big Bad Love is too messy and self-indulgent.
Runtime: 1 hr 51 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: BIG BAD LOVE brings to life the characters that populate Mississippi writer Larry Brown's short story collection of the same name. Leon Barlow (Arliss Howard) is a writer with a compulsion to drink... [More]
Starring: Arliss Howard, Debra Winger, Rosanna Arquette, Paul Le Mat
Director: Arliss Howard
Reviews for Big Bad Love
You can see where Big Bad Love is trying to go, but it never quite gets there.
06/22/02
A movie that can't get sufficient distance from Leroy's delusions to escape their maudlin influence.
06/21/02
The movie is obviously a labour of love so Howard appears to have had free rein to be as pretentious as he wanted.
06/21/02
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05/24/02
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05/11/02
Self-indulgent and pretentious, a narcissistic portrait of the artist as tormented genius that flails about for two hours in a failed effort to appear deep.
05/07/02
Like Leon, it's frustrating and still oddly likable.
05/03/02
A rough, uneven but admirably imaginative film.
05/03/02
While Howard's appreciation of Brown and his writing is clearly well-meaning and sincere, the movie would be impossible to sit through were it not for the supporting cast.
04/26/02
It's the film's languid, woozy feel that draws you in and keeps you there, stuck like a moth in a killing jar redolent of Old Grandad.
04/21/02
The film is an uncannily eerie echo of its protagonist -- ravishingly poetic one moment, bellowing with unarticulated rage the next.
04/12/02
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04/03/02
In any case, I would recommend Big Bad Love only to Winger fans who have missed her since 1995's Forget Paris. But even then, I'd recommend waiting for DVD and just skipping straight to her scenes.
03/29/02
The film often achieves a mesmerizing poetry.
03/29/02
Admirably ambitious but self-indulgent.
03/29/02
You'd be hard put to find a movie character more unattractive or odorous [than Leon].
03/29/02
[Howard] so good as Leon Barlow ... that he hardly seems to be acting.
03/29/02
Brims with passion: for words, for its eccentric, accident-prone characters, and for the crazy things that keep people going in this crazy life.
03/28/02
As aimless as an old pickup skidding completely out of control on a long patch of black ice, the movie makes two hours feel like four.
03/26/02
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