IMDb RATING
5.9/10
1.8K
YOUR RATING
A wealthy businessman shows his young-adult offspring how tough life can be.A wealthy businessman shows his young-adult offspring how tough life can be.A wealthy businessman shows his young-adult offspring how tough life can be.
- Awards
- 1 win & 1 nomination
Tabitha St. Germain
- Secretary
- (as Paulina Gillis)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaCrispin Glover filmed this movie at the same time Back to the Future Part II (1989) was being shot. Crispin Glover did not reach a payment agreement for BTTF2 and archived footage was used with prosthetics added to stand-ins to portray his character. Glover later sued and won.
- Quotes
Stewart McBain: Harry, your loyalty was an accusation. Blame someone else.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Siskel & Ebert: Oscar Nomination Surprises for 1989 (1990)
- SoundtracksBlue Moon Revisited (Song For Elvis)
Written by Margo Timmins and Michael Timmins, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart
Performed by Cowboy Junkies
Featured review
A disaster
My review was written in February 1990 after a Midtown Manhattan screening.
John Boorman's "Where the Heart Is" would be more at home released in the '60s than now. Visually arresting allegorical comedy suffers from gauche dialog, grotesque acting and a stupid ending.
Film is a companion piece to a picture Boorman made 20 years ago for Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler, the little-seen "Leo the Last", in which Marcello Mastroianni was an aristocrat who learns about life from ghetto denizens in London. This time it's tycoon Dabney Coleman who gets the message when he and his family end up in a Brooklyn tenement.
Topic harks back to the now-dated screwball comedies made during the Depression. Boorman also relies heavily on a '90s stock market crash, and his approach to the plight of street people and other current social problems is flippant.
Predictable plotting has tyrannical buildings demolitions expert Coleman, well-cast in an Archie Bunker role, getting fed up with his spoiled, grown-up kids. He throws them out of the mansion and (unconvincingly) orders them to live in a Brooklyn tenement that local protestors have succeeded in preserving against his wrecking ball, holding up a big redevelopment project.
Kids, led by Uma Thurman, are determined to make it on their own. Her sister (Suzy Amis) gets a gig doing a calendar for an insurance company, with Thurman the chief nude model for her body-painting and photography artwork.
Of course, stock market manipulation brings down Coleman's empire and soon he's reunited with his brood on the streets. There's some fun as the good guys succeed (Amis' calendar is a hit with her backers), but that good will is frittered away in an idiotic finish in which Boorman stubs his toe.
Cast reunites at a party and suffers through giddy dialog as they dance around, attempting to tie up loose plot threads. Crispin Glover is revealed to be a "closet heterosexual", merely posing as gay to make it in the fashion world.
Film's most successful element is the series of spectacular trompe l'oeil artworks by Timna Woollard, inspired by paintings by Ingres, Henri Rousseau, Picasso, etc., and personified by Thurman. Combined with the all-nighter atmosphere of the dilapidated Brooklyn house, pic succeeds in capturing a '60s ambience.
Unfortunately, what audience will care about the question posed by Boorman and his daughter, co-scripter Telsche Boorman: "How would '60s people react to today's world?".
Besides Thurman, who is perfectly cast as a sexy kook, Amis makes a very good impression as her artistic, romantic sister. Canadian thesp David Hewlett, who replaced Anthony Michael Hall in the son's role at the beginning of shooting, does not match his siblings (his accent is a problem). Coleman and especially wife Joanna Cassidy overact and pour on the unfunny slapstick. Christopher Plummer is tiresome as a street bum/magician in heavy makeup, using a voice that sounds like Eddie (Rochester) Anderson.
John Boorman's "Where the Heart Is" would be more at home released in the '60s than now. Visually arresting allegorical comedy suffers from gauche dialog, grotesque acting and a stupid ending.
Film is a companion piece to a picture Boorman made 20 years ago for Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler, the little-seen "Leo the Last", in which Marcello Mastroianni was an aristocrat who learns about life from ghetto denizens in London. This time it's tycoon Dabney Coleman who gets the message when he and his family end up in a Brooklyn tenement.
Topic harks back to the now-dated screwball comedies made during the Depression. Boorman also relies heavily on a '90s stock market crash, and his approach to the plight of street people and other current social problems is flippant.
Predictable plotting has tyrannical buildings demolitions expert Coleman, well-cast in an Archie Bunker role, getting fed up with his spoiled, grown-up kids. He throws them out of the mansion and (unconvincingly) orders them to live in a Brooklyn tenement that local protestors have succeeded in preserving against his wrecking ball, holding up a big redevelopment project.
Kids, led by Uma Thurman, are determined to make it on their own. Her sister (Suzy Amis) gets a gig doing a calendar for an insurance company, with Thurman the chief nude model for her body-painting and photography artwork.
Of course, stock market manipulation brings down Coleman's empire and soon he's reunited with his brood on the streets. There's some fun as the good guys succeed (Amis' calendar is a hit with her backers), but that good will is frittered away in an idiotic finish in which Boorman stubs his toe.
Cast reunites at a party and suffers through giddy dialog as they dance around, attempting to tie up loose plot threads. Crispin Glover is revealed to be a "closet heterosexual", merely posing as gay to make it in the fashion world.
Film's most successful element is the series of spectacular trompe l'oeil artworks by Timna Woollard, inspired by paintings by Ingres, Henri Rousseau, Picasso, etc., and personified by Thurman. Combined with the all-nighter atmosphere of the dilapidated Brooklyn house, pic succeeds in capturing a '60s ambience.
Unfortunately, what audience will care about the question posed by Boorman and his daughter, co-scripter Telsche Boorman: "How would '60s people react to today's world?".
Besides Thurman, who is perfectly cast as a sexy kook, Amis makes a very good impression as her artistic, romantic sister. Canadian thesp David Hewlett, who replaced Anthony Michael Hall in the son's role at the beginning of shooting, does not match his siblings (his accent is a problem). Coleman and especially wife Joanna Cassidy overact and pour on the unfunny slapstick. Christopher Plummer is tiresome as a street bum/magician in heavy makeup, using a voice that sounds like Eddie (Rochester) Anderson.
helpful•10
- lor_
- May 7, 2023
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Details
Box office
- Budget
- $15,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $1,106,475
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $530,893
- Feb 25, 1990
- Gross worldwide
- $1,106,475
- Runtime1 hour 47 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1
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