Product Details

• Actors: Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, Arliss Howard, Joan Cusack, Chris O'Donnell
• Directors: Paul Brickman
• Writers: Paul Brickman, Barbara Benedek, Moshé Mizrahi
• Producers: Jon Avnet
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• VHS Release Date: July 31, 1998
• Run Time: 115 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301704754
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,963 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video

Most directors use a hit film to launch an immediate career--but not Paul Brickman, who hit in 1983 with Risky Business then waited until 1990 to make this, his second movie. And it was a good, if overlooked one, starring Jessica Lange as a woman suddenly widowed and unable to cope. She moves her kids (including Chris O'Donnell in his film debut) from the suburbs to downtown Baltimore, where they develop urban survival skills much more quickly than she does. Most of the plot centers on her inability to open up to a man (Arliss Howard) who obviously is right for her--and on O'Donnell's improbable (but extremely funny) affair with a nurse who lives upstairs (Joan Cusack). Touching and funny enough that its lack of surprise won't bother you. --Marshall Fine

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Widow in Baltimore, March 17, 2003

By	MICHAEL ACUNA (Southern California United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Jessica Lange is an American Treasure in the same league as Meryl Streep but with a much less lauded filmography. In "Men Don't Leave," Lange plays a recently widowed woman who finds herself without much money, two young sons and no job. She moves to Baltimore to seek her fortune and make a new life for herself and for her family.
There is a deep and abiding humanity in everything Lange does. Here she is all naked emotion and frantic desperation tempered with an endless well of positivism.

Chris O'Donnell's scene at the Riverfront with Arliss Howard is one of the great, emotionally open and heart wrenching scenes in movies...ever. O'Donnell has not been as truthful in films, since.
"Men Don't Leave" was much ignored when it first opened and it is an embarrassment that it is not available on DVD. But nonetheless, it contains one of the best performances of Jessica Lange's career and it is not to be missed by anyone interested in fine movie acting.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sad, funny, poignant, beautiful film-, August 29, 2006

By	I. Finn "Movie Buff" (Wyandotte, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This has to be Jessica Lange's greatest performance of all her great films. She portrays the shattered widow so believably, a woman that picks up and moves her and her two sons from small town life to Baltimore after her husbands sudden death. While her son's are trying to adapt and pick up the pieces with their new lives, she tries to fight off her depression with her frantic late night baking and constant daytime sleeping. Charlie Korsmo is heartbreaking as the sensitive younger son trying desperately to bring his Mom back to life. Arliss Howard plays the sweet musician that comes into her life quite by accident. Joan Cusack is great as the ditsy nurse that seduces the elder son, and Kathy Bates has a small part as the abrasive boss, for which she is at her usual best. I couldn't recommend this movie more, and make sure you have your hanky ready. I agree with the rest of the reviewers, when will this film be available on DVD???

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, December 10, 1999

By	David E. Dorsey (upstate New York) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

On the A-list of my favorite movies. This is an overlooked gem of a film, where everything works. It reminds me of a great Salinger short story, where all the details are both suprising and totally convincing. There are many moments in this movie that had to be based on direct observation, or, if not, are acts of great creative imagination: the grocery line conversation, the breakfast scene, the food delivery to the Peabody musical performance, and many others. Joan Cusack, Kathy Black, Chris O'Donnell are all outstanding. The music is perfect, as in Brickman's other great effort: Risky Business. There are scenes shot in such a way that they keep evoking different reactions, flipping back and forth between the feel of present event and poignant memory, a sort of bipolar mood established sometimes by nothing more than the distance of the camera from the actors and the lighting. Lange's performance has one of two moments that seemed unconvincing or forced to me, though she's tremendous overall. Like Bottle Rocket and High Art, this is a nearly perfect movie that does what it does so softly it hasn't gotten nearly as much critical attention as it deserves.