Wonderful character development!

What a waste of my time!!!

Am I Missing Something?

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

If you like slow-moving, aimless films, you'll probably like this exercise in murky self-indulgence by writer-director Rudolph. I guess I missed the amusing parts that others seem to find. Mostly I was just bored once I realized the story-- if you want to call it that-- was going nowhere. And what's with Berenger's phony voice that only distracts. Sounds like he could use a good gargle. Of course, noir has been parodied before, and truth be told, it's an easy genre to mock. But this has to be the dimmest of the efforts, if parody is in fact what it is. To me the results aren't interesting enough to care. I guess that's one reason the film flopped at the box-office and has since fallen into well-deserved obscurity. And, oh yes, for those who find profundity in the supposed subtexts, I'll leave that to the Midnight Study Group. Good luck.

Enjoyable movie.It is a tongue in cheek detective story.Berenger uses a phony, gravelly voice and is a mess as a detective: He trails the wrong man for the entire movie.When he stands up at the nightclub he hits his head on the lamp hanging over the table--twice.He does ridiculous things in his supposed detective work, one after another.This is a good natured film and an obvious spoof.The funny things is--it works.It is entertaining and funny in its silliness.I have seen many far worse movies.I would not have known that Berenger had this level of talent for comedy.

I saw this film referred to as a comedy, but I hadn't remembered it as such when I first saw it some years ago. I suppose that it is, but it is funny in a wry sort of way, never a laugh out loud way. I don't know where Tom Berenger got that gravelly voice for this movie, but it seems to fit the part okay. Elizabeth Perkins was lovely and good as an angst-filled gal trying to be a private I. It was interesting to see Neil Young in a small acting role. He did OK. It makes me wonder how hard acting really is. Anne Archer was so totally gorgeous, I almost didn't realize how ridiculous her character was. This ended up being a pretty enjoyable film, if you don't go into it with unrealistic expectations. Grade: B

After reading the reviews, I expected "Love at Large" to be an almost surreal experiment in film noir, heavy on atmosphere and short on plot. It's true that the cars and some of the costumes don't seem to fit the early 1990s setting--Doris's green, full-skirted dress, complete with eight inches of yellow crinoline, is straight out of the 1950s, and the Blue Danube nightclub seems to belong to an even earlier era (pre-World War II). The vampy Miss Dolan exudes a 1940s glamour and mystery, the kind of woman who never existed outside of male fantasies. But much of the action (or conversation) takes place in realistic settings--upper-middle-class suburban houses, airplanes, airports, a ranch in what appears to be Wyoming or Montana.More to the point, the subplot surrounding the bigamist Frederick King/James McGraw (Ted Levine) is not merely "thrown in," as some critics have suggested. Mistaken identity is a classic comedic device going back at least 2000 years to the New Comedy of Menander in ancient Greece, and it still works. It also adds suspense; both Harry (Tom Berenger) and Stella (Elizabeth Perkins) believe McGraw/King to be Miss Dolan's "charming but dangerous" lover, Rick, and are consequently oblivious to whatever danger the real Rick may present.The Levine subplot also provides opportunities for variations on the love theme so blatantly emphasized by Stella's omnipresent "Love Manual." Compared with most movies of the 1980s and 90s, this one has relatively little sex but lots of kissing. (Ted Levine gets to kiss two women, unusual for him, but this film predates "Silence of the Lambs," in which his powerful performance as Jame Gumb stereotyped him as a murderer.) There are some genuinely tender moments and a lot of surprises, some of them comic and most of them in some way related either to love or mistaken identity.The casting is excellent. Both Berenger (despite his gravelly voice) and Perkins are likeable and believable, and Levine is marvelous as a man with two lives and two personalities. (No, he's not schizophrenic; he just likes to go out on a limb because, as he tells Stella, "that's where the fruit is").To say more would be to spoil the film. Find it and watch it. It will be well worth the trouble of hunting it down.