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03/24/02
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
It is the sheer, selfish, wound-licking, bar-scrapping doggedness of Leon's struggle to face and transmute his demons that makes the movie a spirited and touching occasion, despite its patchy construction.
03/22/02
If we had more of Debra then I'd be cool with it, but her husband/co-star /writer goes on and on and on.
03/15/02
It all comes down to whether you can tolerate Leon Barlow. I can't.
03/15/02
Top CriticUnfortunately, Big Bad Love, for all its undeniably good anti-mainstream intentions, fails to come off even as the cutting-edge manifestation it tries so strenuously to be.
03/13/02
Brave and admirable for the trust that it puts in a viewer's intuition and willingness in going along with it right through to its rewarding finish.
03/08/02
Top CriticThe quirks and eccentric touches of the writing wind up being self-indulgent and just plain annoying on the screen, leading to a seat-squirming experience of mythic proportions.
03/08/02
The draw [for "Big Bad Love"] is a solid performance by Arliss Howard.
03/07/02
The only cosmic question that arises from watching this film is, why should we care about any of these people?
03/03/02
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03/02/02
There are labors of love and there are labors of labor, exhaustively worked-through movies in which you feel as if you are watching a director give birth to every idea that has been gestating in the brain since he was given his first 8-mm camera.
02/23/02
[F]rom the performances and the cinematography to the outstanding soundtrack and unconventional narrative, the film is blazingly alive and admirable on many levels.
02/23/02
Top Critic... grounded by honest, expressive performances from Howard and Winger, who achieve a tempestuous chemistry. It also makes you want to pop open a cold one.
02/22/02
... alternately charming and annoying.
02/22/02
Top CriticFar too clever by half, Howard's film is really a series of strung-together moments, with all the spaces in between filled with fantasies, daydreams, memories and one fantastic visual trope after another.
02/22/02
there's enough meat on the bones of Big Bad Love ... to keep it from being dismissable.
02/22/02
Arliss Howard's ambitious, moving, and adventurous directorial debut, Big Bad Love, meets so many of the challenges it poses for itself that one can forgive the film its flaws.
02/22/02
Though Howard demonstrates a great eye as a director, this Southern Gothic drama is sadly a tough sit, with an undeveloped narrative and enough flashbacks and heavy-handed metaphors to choke a horse -- or at least slow him down to a canter.
02/22/02
In the end, this is a story about a hard-to-know guy who loves his typewriter most of all. Everything else is just dust-jacket photography.
02/21/02
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