Product Details

• Actors: Laura Dern, Robert Duvall, Diane Ladd, Lukas Haas, John Heard
• Directors: Martha Coolidge
• Writers: Calder Willingham
• Producers: Edgar J. Scherick, Mario Kassar, Renny Harlin
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Live / Artisan
• VHS Release Date: December 14, 1993
• Run Time: 112 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302306434
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #292,498 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

This overrated period comic-drama, set in Georgia in the 1930s, featured the first mother-daughter team to be nominated for acting Oscars in the same year. Laura Dern plays a free-wheeling young woman who is taken in as a domestic by an upper-class family, headed by Robert Duvall and Diane Ladd (Dern's real-life mother). Rose, who tends to let her sexual urges get the best of her, scandalizes everyone in three counties (including Duvall and Lukas Haas, who plays his son) with her willing spirit. Do those kind of loose morals warrant court-ordered sterilization? Or does this young woman just need a guiding hand? While many fell for this cornpone shtick, directed by Martha Coolidge, it's a hard movie to cozy up to because Rose is such a caricature and the rest of the characters (with the exception of the always exceptional Duvall) are such sticks. --Marshall Fine

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In defense of Laura Dern!, November 28, 2000

By 

Charles M. Cornell (New Orleans, LA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rambling Rose [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I must disagree with the reviewer who so strongly criticized Laura Dern's performance. While it is true that 'Rambling Rose' has its weaknesses (the abrupt, rather unexplained ending, for one thing), I found the story line humorous and even charming. Dern's performance made the movie, in my opinion! Diane Ladd overacts a bit, as usual, but this is a minor flaw with the film as a whole. What stuck with me was Dern's 'little girl lost' expression mixed with her coy devil-may-care flirtation, which made for an entirely winning performance. I loved the music too!

32 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Akin to starting a leaf blower near killer bees, February 2, 2001

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Rambling Rose [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Societies regard single, attractive, sexually available women with both idolization and uneasiness. The lust, envy, jealousy and otherwise tumultuous passions surrounding their passage through the populace can be disruptive of societal bonds, e.g. by "homewrecking", even though no fault of their own. One reason why the concept, at least, of marriage is valued so highly is that this cultural arrangement takes the problematic single female out of circulation, so to speak. And, social pressures cause opprobrium to be heaped on "loose women", even by the very men who are drawn to them. Of course, the feminist correctly sees these attitudes as blatantly sexist. However, even western culture's most chauvinistic pig is likely to regard the veiling and segregation of women in fundamentalist Islamic societies, for example, as an unacceptably extreme manifestation of those same attitudes.

RAMBLING ROSE takes a compassionate look at the phenomenon of social turbulence caused by an "unattached" woman. Rose, flamboyantly played by Laura Dern, is the blithe, single, 19-year old girl invited to live with a very proper Southern family in the mid-1930s. The family, offering Rose help at this difficult time in her life, includes Daddy (Robert Duvall), Mother (Diane Ladd, Dern's real-life mother), and 13-year old Buddy (Lukas Haas). Rose, already possessing a checkered history acquired with unspecified men, is a sexual "free spirit", who proceeds to cause hormonal havoc in the town's male population. Even Daddy is bewitched. To Buddy, Rose is, unsurprisingly, the godsend of a new awareness. Of the adults, only Mother, recognizing Rose as essentially guileless, staunchly defends her as the repercussions of the Siren's residence start to add up.

A better film on much the same theme is Y2K's MALENA - a superb Italian production. Nonetheless, RAMBLING ROSE is delightful. Dern is positively captivating. Duvall is at his best, which is pretty darn good by any measure. Ladd portrays Mother as a slightly eccentric individual whose generosity towards and understanding of Rose is a clear counterpoint to the hardening attitudes of the other adults. The Buddy character should remind all males in the viewing audience of that time when they were 13 and discovering girls as beings with something more to offer than simply opportunities for boorish teasing. I like this film immensely.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pleasant diversion, August 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Rambling Rose [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Contrary to another viewer, I though Laura Dern's acting was very good in this film, unlike in "Jurassic Park" where she really did seem gawky and unnatural. The film has some nostalgia, some laughs, and some pathos. Not a classic, but an enjoyable diversion about a free-spirited young woman who creates havoc around her.