Review of Wild at Heart (1990) by Fitz K — 28 Jun 2011

Wild at Heart won the Palm d'or at Cannes and is often considered one of Lynch's great works, but I must passionately disagree. I adore David Lynch from his early short films to his much maligned Inland Empire, but Wild at heart is by far my least favorite of his films.

Perhaps I just don't get it. I understand that it is being purposefully cheesy and overly dramatic like most of Lynch's films, but I just find it annoying for large and stupid for large portions of its running time.

Having seen almost all of Lynch's films, I fully appreciate his bizarro, iconoclastic, irreverent style of filmmaking, but Wild at Heart just falls flat for me. Despite a seemingly awesome cast of Diane Ladd, Willem Dafoe, Isabella Rossellini, Harry Dean Stanton, and many others, I find the film gets dragged down by the overly hammy acting and cheesy story of its main two characters played by Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern.

I hate them from beginning to end and am much more interested in the dark, weird events playing out in the background. Plus, the film's Wizard of Oz allegory is overly heavy-handed, blatant, and just stupid.

The film's storyline ultimately doesn't match up with the Wizard of Oz like it believes it does. It makes John Bunyan and Nathaniel Hawthorne seem subtle by comparison. Again, Wild at Heart features some compelling moments and a distinctly unconventional, independent spirit, but I ultimately think that it fails to achieve its ambitions.

And I just have to turn it off when Nicolas Cage starts singing "Love Me Tender," but perhaps that just due to my personal dislike of Elvis.