 Caton-Jones has said DiCaprio did not know how to behave on set; he applied a strict mentoring style that he said resulted in improvements in DiCaprio's behavior.Bilge Ebiri of "Rolling Stone" found it "an evocative, touching little movie, defined by the powerful bond between Barkin and DiCaprio", praising his complex growth from "a wide-eyed son to a rebellious greaser to an independent, sensitive young man".In 1993, DiCaprio co-starred as the intellectually disabled brother of Johnny Depp's character in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape", a comic-tragic odyssey of a dysfunctional Iowa family.