Metascore

Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 24 Critics What's this?

User Score

Mixed or average reviews- based on 12 Ratings

  • Starring: Fred Weller, Frederick Weller, Neve Campbell
  • Summary: 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)
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 24
  2. Negative: 11 out of 24
  1. 100
    Campbell's performance is carnal, verbally facile, physically uninhibited and charged with intelligence.
  2. The movie morphs into a deconstructed remake of "Indecent Exposure" and it's downright riveting, with Campbell doing her best acting to date.
  3. A slim idea for a pulp-fiction short story padded out to 81 minutes with random encounters and celebrity sightings.
  4. Toback is a smart guy with kinky tastes who has nothing left but to tempt actors into performing in his sex fantasies.

See all 24 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 5
  2. Negative: 2 out of 5
  1. If the director (Toback) had just stayed behind the camera, this film would have been more easily perceived in a positive light as Ebert does. I also think it is more understandable to an older, more urban audience and not to the Hollywood teenie big money crowd. I actually enjoyed this movie (except Toback's acting part) and thought the acting was great especially Campbell's. Toback's story line developed the main characters in a way that made the plot almost believable at the end. The three characters were a wealthy user, a hustler, and a supposedly naive girl who had the upbringing and intelligence to fight being taken advantage of. Expand
  2. ChadS.
    6
    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. Collapse
  3. Overall I Dont Like This Movie @ All.. I Love Neve But I Hated This Film! The Plot Is Bad, And Most Of The Acting Is Really Poor... I Gave It 2 Extra Points For Neve.. 5 Expand

See all 5 User Reviews