Grade: D
It’s easy to understand why Arliss Howard found the short stories of Larry Bown promising material for a film which he could direct and star in; they provide him with a part that keeps him at center stage almost constantly and allows him to play the sort of bedraggled, driven character who catches the eye of award committees. It’s also perfectly intelligible why his wife, Debra Winger, would be willing to return to the screen in support, even in a relatively small (and not terribly grateful) part (and to produce the film). As a family effort “Big Bad Love” must have been therapeutic, if nothing else. As a film, however, it’s self-indulgent and pretentious, a narcissistic portrait of the artist as tormented genius that flails about for more than two hours in a failed effort to appear deep and insightful. The fact that the protagonist might be intended as a surrogate for Howard himself is particularly troublesome, because the ostentatious quirkiness of the script and the aggressively arty montages that fill the film call attention to themselves in the worst possible way, suggesting that the actor’s move behind the camera was an unwise one.
Howard plays Leon Barlow, a Vietnam vet living an troubled life in his Mississippi hometown. A hard drinker separated from his wife, he works only when necessary to make ends meet, usually at the insistence of his rich, somewhat goofy but amiable buddy Monroe (Paul Le Mat), who served with him in the war; otherwise he spends his time tapping out short stories on a manual typewriter, which he sends off to magazines and publishers that constantly decline to print them. Leon tries to maintain good relations with his sharp-tongued ex-wife Marilyn (Winger), but it’s difficult for her to rein in her temper when he neglects their two children Alan (Zach Moody) and little Alisha (Olivia Kersey); though he desperately loves the kids, the call of his muse often leads him effectively to abandon them during visitations to the care of his mother (Angie Dickinson). There are other important characters–most notably the likeably down-to- earth Velma (Rosanne Arquette) whom Monroe weds–and lots of incidents (a car crash, a stay in jail, a terrible accident, a tragic death), but throughout the focus stays resolutely on Leon. Apparently we’re meant to be irresistibly drawn to this difficult, maniacal man, and to appreciate that not only he, but the people around him, have to suffer for his art; but in reality it’s difficult to tolerate him at all, and impossible to understand why the characters surrounding him would put up with the fellow at all. And it’s very hard to assent to the picture’s apparent contention that his ultimate triumph when his novel is accepted for publication is worth all the horror he’s put other people through in obsessively pursuing his goal.
As director, Howard allows himself far too much leeway. On screen almost constantly, he stumbles about wasted for an unconscionable time; judicious cutting could have reduced the two- hour-plus running-time to something more endurable. (It would also have been wise for him and editor Jay Rabinowitz to excise at least some of the flashy film-school montages that punctuate the picture; the empty exercises in style slow things down and make whatever the film’s trying to say even murkier than it need be.) Winger offers her gruff shtick, but little more, and both Le Mat and Arquette feign quirkiness well enough. The best work comes from the older co-stars: Dickinson radiates a crusty concern as Leon’s increasingly distraught mother, and it’s good to see Michael Parks shambling about as the coot who runs the general store.
To be fair, “Big Bad Love” does occasionally achieve a moment or two of melancholy power, but one has to put up with an awful lot of overheated dawdling to experience them. By the time it crawls to a close you’re likely to think it a pity that one of those many rejection notices Leon pins up on his walls couldn’t have been sent to the scriptwriters instead.