lizjonesm Again put off from watching re description. I don't tend to watch many biographical movies and certainly couldn't see appeal of watching one about author of Conan the Barbarian (British so not such a cult over here and also a woman so not much appeal!) . I think picked up few times in video store as Renee in it and by then had watched her in Bridget Jones.. but kept reading story line and popped it back. Should have read "1930s Texas, a story of love between a writer of erotic,fantasy adventures, lost in his own world and a forward thinking school teacher torn between conventionality and love." Having googled a little about Robert Howard, think they portrayed his relationship with his mother compassionately and accurately. One of best romantic films I have ever watched ...just think they cut a few scenes that were needed and maybe needed to edit some of longer drawn out parts of movie.

cnycitylady This movie is probably one of the best to come out of the nineties. I mean, the storyline is fresh, the characters are endearing and sympathetic, and the interactions between the two leads and you the viewer is just perfectly conducted. The title makes you suppose it is this vast tale about a physical journey, when in fact it is a journey of the heart and mind. And one that is a very dangerous undertaking.Renee Zellweger has the rare talent of formulating chemistry with any of her co-stars, but here with Vincent D'Onofrio it's so much more natural. You feel the sizzling sexual tension between the two from start to finish. The characters are a match for each other in every way and it just breaks your heart when the ending comes upon you. Vincent D'Onofrio was the perfect choice for Robert E. Howard, you could see, hear and feel his emotional conflicts and mental instability. He brought a kind of charming hopelessness to this person who needs to be taken care of by taking care of someone else. Zellweger was (as usual) wonderfully cute in this role. She falls for the wild, uncertain pulp fiction writer and has the means to help him, but tragically is unable to.The pacing of this movie was flawless. The movie just flies by and by the end you want to put it on again it was so delicious. This movie doesn't look like much on the outside, but beneath the cover and strangely misleading title is an illustrious tale of two beings destined for greatness and each other.

funkyfry I have to admit up front, I originally sought this movie out because I'm a dedicated fan of the enigmatic pulp genius Robert E. Howard, who ended his prolific career by a self-inflicted gunshot to the head in 1936. This movie is based on the memoirs of a woman he was involved with named Novalyn Price. So again to be up front, this movie is very pleasing to me as a fan of Bob Howard. It reveals some of the negative aspects of this man (although skimming clear of his extreme racist views, which to be fair he tended to show more in his writing than in his personal behavior) but also shows us a lot of his heart and the beauty of his writer's soul that always found such tortured expression in the famous "Conan" and "Solomon Kane" stories. But I think the movie is going to be just as pleasing to those who are not fans of Howard's writing -- perhaps even more so, because this isn't really a movie just about a writer, it's about a relationship between two writers. And it's a messy, very realistic relationship at that.This was a very early film for Renee Zellweger, and I was impressed right away with the ability she shows here in this film. None of her subsequent and often acclaimed performances have matched what she did here, opposite the great character actor Vincent D'Onofrio who brings Howard himself to vivid life. The movie is all about these 2 people -- there are no action scenes, there is no real drama except a manufactured drama that Bob Howard creates to compensate for his inadequacy and lack of resolve. There are many powerful scenes where these 2 people are consumed in an atmosphere of natural beauty, which suggests the world of imagination inside these writers -- Novalyn says from the hillside "you can see the whole wide world from up here" and Howard says "other worlds, too." Always the sense of what Bob Howard's imaginary world could look like is bubbling beneath the surface of what we see -- never do the film-makers stoop to any actual visualization of the fantasy universe, but sound effects and music are effectively used to create that sense of his dangerous and exotic fantasy world, while at the same time there is an emptiness around Novalyn's literary aspirations which contrasts with it. There are always two stories battling here -- a love story between two human beings and a sort of journey in stasis between two writers.There's no way to put into precise words just how incredible I think D'Onofrio's performance is here. Again, as a longtime fan of Bob Howard, I can say that the performance matches my image of him down to the smallest physical mannerisms. As a treat for fans we even get to see Bob in his late phase when he wore a sombrero and liked to walk the streets of El Paso "disguised" as a Mexican. All of Bob's paranoia and his contradictions are on display, and even more fascinating when put into the light of day by dramatic action -- he was a man whose ego demanded absolute self-sufficiency, but who had such deep emotional ties to his small circle of family and friends that he was unable to cope with any kind of loss in his life. The manufactured drama when Bob finds out that Novalyn is dating his friend Truett is just one of the more harmless examples of this, but Novalyn's perspective as expressed in the film enables us to see how deeply Bob Howard's behavior must have hurt and alienated the very people he needed and trusted so deeply. The pain and confusion are brilliantly expressed in Zellweger's performance, and there are also a pair of excellent supporting performances from Ann Wedgeworth and Harve Presnell as the Howard parents.This is a beautiful film, this is a film that has a world of emotion while having absolutely no stylized or melodramatic plot devices to push us one way or the other in our feelings -- it just unfolds at the pace of its story and draws us in to the lives of 2 people in a particular place and time. They are people who don't seem to fit -- a big awkward hulk of a fantasy writer whose hard working Texan neighbors think he's a sissy, and a headstrong woman trying to make a career for herself in the same conservative universe. But through the eye of this cinematic gem, they both seem to belong in this time and place and we feel as if they left a bit of their hearts behind in their writings so that we could discover it with them.

janelouadams The Whole Wide World was one of the best movies I have seen in my 82 years (79 of them watching as many movies as I could) and I had not known there was a movie about Robert Howard, much less starring two of my now favorite actors. It was so good it gave me chills. I think most of it was the acting of Vincent D'Onofrio - it was as if it wasn't even acting. He just WAS Robert Howard. A fascinating man and a fascinating man played him. Vincent D'Onofrio is one of our greatest actors today and, no matter what you see him in, or what part he is playing, or whoever else is there, you can't take your eyes off of him. If you are truly a great movie lover, don't miss this one.