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When Will I Be Loved
Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 24 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 7 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: James Toback
Directed by: James Toback
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 10, 2004
DVD: January 25, 2005
Running Time: 83 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for strong sexuality, nudity and language
Starring Neve Campbell, Fred Weller, Dominic Chianese, Karen Allen, Barry Primus, Mike Tyson, and Lori Singer
This hip, scintillating, post-feminist film takes a classic Hollywood form -- that of a leading lady as black widow -- and brings it edgy new life. (IFC Films)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Black and White Harvard Man Two Girls and a Guy
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Campbell's performance is carnal, verbally facile, physically uninhibited and charged with intelligence.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
The movie morphs into a deconstructed remake of "Indecent Exposure" and it's downright riveting, with Campbell doing her best acting to date.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
Far from a complete success: It takes too long to get to its central premise and, once there, too often meanders away from it. But Campbell is close to astonishing whenever she's onscreen.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Campbell and her character are willing to take chances. But Toback's tangled noirish plot, with Vera as a post-feminist femme fatale, isn't particularly clever or original.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
In much the same way that Godard used heroines like Anna Karina or Bardot, Toback showcases Campbell's face as a placard of unknowability--a quality he recognizes as inherently feminine. The (inadvertent) question we are left with is, How much is there to know about her anyway?
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
The structure of When Will I Be Loved seems deliberately flimsy, and many of its details don't add up. But as a contemporary fable about getting and spending in the new gilded age, When Will I Be Loved strikes a chord that echoes.
Read Full Review >Variety Robert Koehler
Campbell's performance is attuned to the extremes of unnerving calm and intensely erotic; unlike the pic, she pulls it off.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
With its improvisatory tone and loose, rambling structure, which often approaches a total breakdown of coherence, the story takes about half an hour to emerge.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
A slim idea for a pulp-fiction short story padded out to 81 minutes with random encounters and celebrity sightings.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
A ripe psychosexual compost heap of a drama that emits a provocative scent of rot and nonsense.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Beyond the "hell hath no fury" angle that overlays the story, When Will I Be Loved amounts to nothing more than another repository for kinky Tobackisms: Seen one (and the one to see remains 1978's Fingers), seen them all.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
Another art film that's more pretentious than it needs to be.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Toback is a smart guy with kinky tastes who has nothing left but to tempt actors into performing in his sex fantasies.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Though once capable of writing distinct characters, Toback now populates his pictures with one-dimensional conceits who all talk like undereducated hustlers, from college professors to bottom feeders and international lions of business.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Christopher Zinsli
Something in Toback’s approach to the subject of sex, somehow both lecherous and detached, makes it tough to get a handle on the film.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson
It's unfortunate that, nudity and all, this is one of Toback's absolute worst efforts.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
Collapses under the weight of its own pretension, a victim of misogyny trying to pass itself off as female sexual empowerment.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Slapdash plot, paper-thin characters, misogynist undertones, and mechanical crosscutting are all soft-core standbys.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
The whole enterprise is a colossal waste of everyone's time.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
When Will I Be Loved would rate no stars except for Campbell's brave, totally committed performance -- which deserves a far better movie than this.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
It's trivial and narcissistic and ultimately rather sordid.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Most atrocious movies build into their badness, as lacks of talent, ideas, self-confidence, or a total hatred of an audience, are revealed. This one gets it out of the way up front and never looks back.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Toback has hit a new low. The candor and shrugging good humor Toback, at his best, used to show has been replaced by a repellent slurpiness: The whole picture seems coated with a slimy sheen of drool.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 3.8 (out of 10) based on 7 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Chad S. gave it a6:
Neve Campbell goes full-frontal in the shower(sort of) without a body double, as was not the case with Angie Dickinson's nude scene in Brian DePalma's "Dressed to Kill"; the 1980 slasher film that "When Will I Be Loved" superficially resembles in the opening minutes. This latest piece of guerilla filmmaking by the director of "Black and White" seems to be an unofficial sequel(somebody forgot to tell Mike Tyson to go home) when Vera(Campbell) stalks the sidewalks of New York(for men) with Professor Rabinowitz(James Toback) at the outset. The editor's use of a staccato cross-cutting style between Vera and Ford(Fred Weller) is meant to illustrate how the couple are ill-matched for each other(as suggested by the disparate soundtracks; hip-hop for him, classical for her). There is no common ground that would indicate these two urbanites know each other, which is the point, but it makes "When Will I Be Loved" something of a chore to sit through. When Ford pimps his girlfriend to an Italian count(Dominic Chianese), he arrives at Vera's gaudy bachleorette pad to make an offer the post-feminist can't refuse. All the scenes that take place in Vera's loft is accompanied by classical music, which performs the function of softening the carnal(sometimes sordid) activities that Vera engages in with Lupo(the count) and her other suitors. This air of elegance that permeates the loft feminizes Vera to an extent that we rule her out as a femme fatale, even when the film suggests that she, by all appearances, is one. The end of "When Will I Be Loved" seems incoherent; in the closing moments, her expression in the shower mirror suggests a murderous intent, but the film never supplies us with a visual clue to back up the malevolence behind her mischevious smirk. We need an insert.
Gary G gave it a5:
Neve Campbell is a revelation, although the film has faux-Woody Allan aura about.
Jay gave it a2:
Really repellant. The sex scenes were embarassing, the plot preposterous, the whole thing very pretentious. Campbell's performance was the only redeeming feature.
Hillary gave it a0:
Absolute crap. Sterotypical-phony-New-Yorker-full-of-themselves-crap.
