''I Love You to Death'' is a 1990 American
black comedy
Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, or gallows humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discus ...
film directed by
Lawrence Kasdan
Lawrence Edward Kasdan (born January 14, 1949) is an American filmmaker. He is the co-writer of the ''Star Wars'' films ''The Empire Strikes Back'' (1980), ''Return of the Jedi'' (1983), ''The Force Awakens'' (2015), and ''Solo: A Star Wars Stor ...
and starring an
ensemble cast
In a dramatic production, an ensemble cast is one that is composed of multiple principal actors and performers who are typically assigned roughly equal amounts of screen time.Random House: ensemble acting Linked 2013-07-17
Structure
In contrast to ...
featuring
Kevin Kline
Kevin Delaney Kline (born October 24, 1947) is an American actor. He is the recipient of an Academy Award and three Tony Awards. In addition, he has received nominations for two British Academy Film Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and five ...
,
Tracey Ullman
Tracey Ullman (born Trace Ullman, 30 December 1959) is a British-American actress, comedian, singer, writer, producer, and director. Her earliest mainstream appearances were on British television sketch comedy shows ''A Kick Up the Eighties'' (wi ...
,
Joan Plowright
Joan Ann Olivier, Baroness Olivier, (née Plowright; born 28 October 1929), professionally known as Dame Joan Plowright, is an English retired actress whose career has spanned over seven decades. She has won two Golden Globe Awards and a Ton ...
,
River Phoenix
River Jude Phoenix (; August 23, 1970 – October 31, 1993) was an American actor, musician and activist.
Phoenix grew up in an itinerant family, as the older brother of Rain Phoenix, Joaquin Phoenix, Liberty Phoenix, and Summer Phoenix. He ha ...
,
William Hurt
William McChord Hurt (March 20, 1950 – March 13, 2022) was an American actor. Known for his performances on stage and screen, he received various awards including an Academy Award, BAFTA Award and Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor.
...
, and
Keanu Reeves
Keanu Charles Reeves ( ; born September 2, 1964) is a Canadian actor. Born in Beirut and raised in Toronto, Reeves began acting in theatre productions and in television films before making his feature film debut in '' Youngblood'' (1986). ...
.
The screenplay by John Kostmayer is loosely based on an attempted murder that happened in 1983, in
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Allentown (Pennsylvania Dutch language, Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Allenschteddel'', ''Allenschtadt'', or ''Ellsdaun'') is a city in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. The city has a population of 125,845 as of the 2020 United ...
, where Frances Toto repeatedly tried to kill her husband, Anthony.
She spent four years in prison for
attempted murder
Attempted murder is a crime of attempt in various jurisdictions.
Canada
Section 239 of the ''Criminal Code'' makes attempted murder punishable by a maximum of life imprisonment. If a gun is used, the minimum sentence is four, five or seven ye ...
and was released in 1988.
Plot
Joey Boca is the owner of a pizza parlor located in
Tacoma, Washington
Tacoma ( ) is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. A port city, it is situated along Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, Washington, Olympia, and northwest of Mount ...
, and has been married to Rosalie for several years. Their marriage seems a typical one until Rosalie discovers that Joey is a womanizer and has been cheating on her for years with multiple women.
Rosalie does not want to allow Joey the pleasure of having every woman he wants, so she refuses divorce. Taking extreme measures, she enlists the help of her mother and her young co-worker Devo, who is secretly in love with her, to kill Joey. They hire two incompetent, perpetually stoned men, cousins Harlan and Marlon James.
To her surprise, Joey proves impossible to kill. Even though Rosalie heavily doses Joey with sleeping pills, he simply gets a stomach cramp, and dismisses it as a virus. They then ask Devo to come over and shoot Joey, but Devo looks away and only ends up wounding Joey behind the ear. When Marlon's cowardice stops him from being present at Joey's murder, Harlan shoots Joey through the chest, but missing his heart.
Eventually a convict at the local commissary reveals their plan, and when the police arrive they find the wounded Joey in some pain. He is taken to the hospital, and Rosalie, her mother, Devo, and the James cousins are arrested. Seeing the error of his ways and at his mother's behest, Joey refuses to press charges and bails everyone out of jail. As he waits for Rosalie with flowers and a box of chocolates, he meets the James cousins and makes peace. Seeing Rosalie again, he asks her to take him back, but still offended, she runs out. Joey catches her and in the janitors' closet they reveal their love with some intimacy, much to Devo's dismay and the surprise of Rosalie's mother.
Cast
Release
The film earned $4 million on its opening weekend and grossed over $16 million in North America.
Reception
''I Love You to Death'' received mixed reviews.
On
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, it has a approval rating based on reviews, with an average score of . On
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, the film has a weighted average score of 45 out of 100 based on reviews from 13 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by
CinemaScore
CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data.
Background
Ed Mintz founded Ci ...
gave the film a grade C on scale of A to F.
Jonathan Rosenbaum, writing for the ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
'', described the film as a "fair-to-middling black comedy" and that "although the pacing is sluggish in spots, people with a taste for acting as impersonation will enjoy some of the scenery chewing—especially by Plowright, Kline, and Hurt".
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
describes the film as "an actor's dream" but isn't quite so sure it is a dream film for an audience. He praises Ullman for her performance, noting it is all the more effective against the overtly comic performance of Kline.
Ebert remarks "William Hurt could have walked through the role of the spaced-out hit man, but takes the time to make the character believable and even, in a bleary way, complex".
Ebert suggests Kasdan was attracted to the script because it seems almost impossible to direct, and although he is not sure it succeeds, it is certainly not boring.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:I Love You To Death
1990 films
1990s English-language films
1990s Italian-language films
Serbo-Croatian-language films
1990s crime comedy-drama films
American black comedy films
American crime comedy-drama films
Films scored by James Horner
Adultery in films
Films about dysfunctional families
Mariticide in fiction
American films about revenge
American films based on actual events
Films directed by Lawrence Kasdan
Films shot in Washington (state)
TriStar Pictures films
1990s black comedy films
Italian-language American films
1990s American films