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When Will I Be Loved

EMAILPRINTIFC Films

When Will I Be Loved reviews
39
3.8 User Score:

Generally unfavorable reviews

Based on 24 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 7 votes
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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)

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...

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Campbell's performance is carnal, verbally facile, physically uninhibited and charged with intelligence.

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75

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.

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70

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.

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63

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.

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50

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?

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50

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.

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50

Variety Robert Koehler

Campbell's performance is attuned to the extremes of unnerving calm and intensely erotic; unlike the pic, she pulls it off.

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50

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.

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50

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.

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50

Village Voice J. Hoberman

More wacky than wack.

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50

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

A ripe psychosexual compost heap of a drama that emits a provocative scent of rot and nonsense.

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50

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.

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50

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Another art film that's more pretentious than it needs to be.

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38

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.

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30

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.

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30

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.

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30

Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson

It's unfortunate that, nudity and all, this is one of Toback's absolute worst efforts.

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30

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.

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30

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Slapdash plot, paper-thin characters, misogynist undertones, and mechanical crosscutting are all soft-core standbys.

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25

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The whole enterprise is a colossal waste of everyone's time.

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25

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.

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20

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

It's trivial and narcissistic and ultimately rather sordid.

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12

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.

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10

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.

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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.

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