“People hated it”: the Leonardo DiCaprio movie that pissed everyone off
Comfortably entrenched as one of modern Hollywood’s biggest and most popular stars, even when his movies aren’t very good, Leonardo DiCaprio can seemingly do no wrong.
That said, most of his movies are good, widely acclaimed, and successful, which is why he’s in the position that he’s in, and has been for the last three decades. Even when they aren’t, though, his nose for a script is so strong that it can turn chicken shit into chicken salad.
Take Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, for example. It was a polarising picture, to say the least, and it’s not untrue to call the star-studded parable a smug and self-serving example of the industry’s high and mighty smelling their own farts, but it was still a ‘Best Picture’ nominee in spite of its polarising nature.
In fact, of the last eight films in which DiCaprio has played a leading role, dating back to 2012, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is the only one that wasn’t shortlisted for ‘Best Picture’ at the Academy Awards, so DiCaprio’s name alone virtually guarantees prestige and awards season recognition.
There’s been the odd misstep or two along the way since Titanic cemented him as a household name, with The Beach the most notable example, but before that, when he gave a daring performance in Agnieszka Holland’s Total Eclipse, it would be fair to say that not everyone was especially enthused.
“People hated it,” was DiCaprio’s summation, which isn’t too far from the truth. If you discount Critters 3, which he definitely would, then it was the worst-reviewed movie he’d ever starred in at the time, and depending on whether or not you think it’s better or worse than the beach, it still might be.
Curiously, it was also the only time he’s been directed by a female filmmaker, not that we’re suggesting that its miserly showing among critics and at the box office has anything to do with the fact that he’s gone 30 years without working with another woman behind the camera.
“I think the only people who liked Total Eclipse were people who liked Rimbaud,” he pondered, before contradicting himself. “But then, a lot of people who liked Rimbaud hated it, too. I don’t really know what to say about Total Eclipse.” Being the mid 1990s, much of the discourse was focused on the kiss between DiCaprio and David Thewlis more than anything else, which became an unwanted distraction.
The star acknowledged that “it was crazy” how that became the movie’s single biggest talking point, but since he acknowledged that critics hated it, audiences rejected it, and even Rimbaud devotees weren’t unanimously won over, it doesn’t sound like he thought it could be saved anyway.
