"Wilder Napalm" is, without doubt, a very odd and quirky movie and I don't think that it's for everyone, but I have fallen in love with it. I just love its use of romance, dark humor, and magical realism. There are very few movies that are this unique.
This film is a surrealistic gem. I rescued it from the buck bin and let it gather dust for a few years, and I finally watched it last night. I'm surprised it only rates 4.9 on IMDb. It's certainly not for everyone, but it takes chances that few mainstream films dare to. Debra Winger, Dennis Quaid and Arliss Howard are outstanding.
a few years ago my 13 yr.-old picked this movie out because he wanted to see a war movie, and this one had the word 'napalm' in the title. since then i have watched this movie at least 50 times. the three leads are amazing, the music is great, but it's the camera work and editing that gets me the hardest. the opening cuts from the roundness of wallace's clown nose to the roundness of the sun's surface to the roundness of a fish-eye lens of the shopping center's pàrking lot. ¡WOW! and then the fade away from wallace in the ferris wheel ends up seeing vida in both reflection and real image, indicating her ambivalent state of mind at that time. ¡Genius! i could go on and on about this movie, and sometimes do. definately, it is included in my 'alone on a desert island with only 10 movies' list. i gave it a ten.
The real exclamation point on this mini-classic is that Arliss Howard (Wilder) and Debra Winger (Vida) are married in real life. They hitched up in 1996, about 3 years after the release of Wilder Napalm.
Guess that on-screen chemistry in the flick was the real deal.
I've seen this movie about five years ago, but till this day I couldn't remember the name of it. Thank's to IMDB users I finaly found it. As much as I remember it's a really good movie. I remember that commercials of it looked really stupid and I didn't even want to see it, but for some reason I turned it on and I was stuned by... everything. I wish I could see it again, but it wasn't on TV for years and I don't think it will ever be. I can't find a DVD anywhere and there isn't even a torrent of it anywhere. The only clip of it I found on youtube is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MXACIu0yjY It's so sad that it's such an underrated film.