Heavy Movie Review

One hundred and nineteen minutes is a long time to spend at a pizzeria where you'd normally get a meal to go because you don't want to eat it there. But since James Mangold put a lot of thought into this one, here's the story. Victor (Pruitt Taylor Vince) is fat, shy, and lives with his mother, Dolly. Dolly (Shelley Winters) is ailing, in her early 70s, and also fat. Dolores (Deborah Harry) is a waitress in her late 40s. She's been around the block more than once but never looked twice at Vince. Leo (Joe Grifasi) is a regular in his 50s. Joining this exciting group is, yes, LIV TYLER as Callie, the new 17-year-old waitress! Her boyfriend is a mechanic named Jeff (Evan Dando of the Lemon-heads) and Victor is more than twice Callie's age, but he's inspired to start a weight loss program, anyway. It took a long time for this subtle, well-acted, slow movie to find a distributor. Tyler, naturally, received most of the attention. Her track record to date has been just fair, though: Silent Fall, Empire Records, Inventing the Abbotts, and her breakthrough film, Stealing Beauty.

1994 (R) 104m/C Pruitt Taylor Vince, Shelley Winters, Liv Tyler, Deborah Harry, Evan Dando, Joe Grifasi; D: James Mangold; W: James Mangold; C: Michael Barrow; M: Thurston Moore. Sundance Film Festival ‘95: Special Jury Prize. VHS, Closed Caption