Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

38 12 Rounds
48 17 Again
76 Adventureland
48 Angels & Demons
54 Battle for Terra
xx Bruno
80 Coraline
40 Dance Flick
83 Drag Me to Hell
72 Earth
45 Fast & Furious
61 Fighting
34 Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
72 Gran Torino
73 Hangover, The
47 Hannah Montana: The Movie
51 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
54 Imagine That
41 Knowing
32 Land of the Lost
56 Monsters vs. Aliens
34 My Life in Ruins
51 My Sister's Keeper
46 Next Day Air
42 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
54 Observe and Report
25 Obsessed
48 Proposal, The
70 Public Enemies
61 Soloist, The
83 Star Trek
64 State of Play
55 Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, The
52 Terminator Salvation
35 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
77 Under the Sea 3D
88 Up
43 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
34 Year One

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

When Will I Be Loved
IFC Films


3.8

based on 24 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 7 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA 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)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	James Toback
DIRECTED BY:	James Toback
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: January 25, 2005 Theatrical: September 10, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	83 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Variety Robert Koehler

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

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.

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.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

More wacky than wack.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

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

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.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

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

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.

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.

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.

Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson

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

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.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

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

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

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

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.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

It's trivial and narcissistic and ultimately rather sordid.

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.

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.

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.

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page

When Will I Be Loved IFC Films

When Will I Be Loved
IFC Films