52
Metascore
18 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 90VarietyVarietyJoltingly violent, wickedly funny and rivetingly erotic, David Lynch's Wild at Heart [based on the novel by Barry Gifford] is a rollercoaster ride to redemption through an American gothic heart of darkness.
- 88Chicago TribuneDave KehrChicago TribuneDave KehrAnd yet there is enough of a core of sincerity to turn even the most preposterous moments-such as the film's dream-sequence finale-into something moving and true: You buy the feelings, even as the situations degenerate into the ludicrous and absurd. [17 Aug 1990, Friday, p.C]
- 78Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAustin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenDavid Lynch doesn't tell stories as much as he shows hallucinations. Wierd, wild, excessive, obsessive, idiosyncratic visions.
- 63Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertThere is something repulsive and manipulative about it, and even its best scenes have the flavor of a kid in the school yard, trying to show you pictures you don't feel like looking at.
- 60Washington PostDesson ThomsonWashington PostDesson ThomsonThe movie's initial intensity is so great, it consumes itself. By the time we reach the final scene, which is clearly supposed to exude glorious rapture between offbeat lovers Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern, it has all the warming effect of cold ash.
- 50Christian Science MonitorDavid SterrittChristian Science MonitorDavid SterrittAs a story, Wild at Heart is even less coherent than “Blue Velvet,'' to the point where whole characters and subplots disappear into a murky haze at the end. [17 Aug 1990, Arts, p.11]
- 50TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineA wacky, occasionally inventive road movie that fails to display the vision or the dark intensity of director Lynch's earlier work.
- 42Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanA lurid hodgepodge of the ''subversive'' and the secondhand, the movie lacks the primal pop pleasures of Lynch's best work.
- 38USA TodayMike ClarkUSA TodayMike ClarkOne of the most violent opening scenes in screen history…Yet given such a visually adept exercise, the rest seems transparently off-the-cuff. There are obese trailer-camp porn stars, heavenly visions, a climactic rendition of Love Me Tender and no-point references to The Wizard of Oz - all of which top this two-hour farrago like a soggy tarp. [17 Aug 1990, Life, 4D]
- 30TimeRichard CorlissTimeRichard CorlissThe first Lynch film in which his motives -- to hang a haberdashery of bizarre incidents on the merest hook of plot -- are apparent... What's lacking is the old sense of delicious, disturbing mystery. [20 Aug 1990, p.63]