Loverboy (2005)

How sad is this?

Disappointment for a huge fan!

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

I get the point of the movie, Kyra plays the neglected child of the self absorbed and sex crazed Kevin and Marissa. I just found it rather poorly written and unnecessarily sexual for these characters. I mean, do we really need to SEE her have sex with half a dozen men in half a dozen places to get the point that she wants to get pregnant? I love Sandra, Kyra and Kevin and Marissa....but this movie was sadly beneath any of their talents. I am happy, however that Kevin Bacan is so thrilled with his wife's fabulous body. I guess that to me was a little weird as well, knowing her husband was the director of all of her sex scenes. Not only was the movie twisted, but the director and cast as well.

The problem with this film is that it tries to do too much. It is basically an attempt to describe the intergenerational dysfunctionality of the family of the main character, played ably at times by Kyra Sedgwick. Nevertheless, there are other moments when this female character, who is otherwise clearly possessed by numerous demons, just comes across as plain silly. Silliness isn't necessarily out of tune with what is really happening in this complex, but poorly-told tale; Kyra Sedwick's "parents" in the film are also silly, goofing around until the poignant moment when they realise their 10-year-old daughter singing David Bowie's "Life on Mars" acapella at her school's end-of-year show, is a reference to their freakishness. But the real, deep, important questions the movie raises are left frustratingly unaddressed and unanswered: how can two people who are so crazy about one another ignore the fruit of their love? When does a mother's love turn from genuine care into stifling, morbid possessiveness? At one point, the mother is trying to defend her refusal to let her son attend school by quoting Emerson and Alessandra Montessori; but it is never really clear just what it is she actually dreams for her son, other than always having him by her side. She confesses to the viewer, "I admit, I encouraged arrogance" in her son, but the boy is the only reasonable one of the pair, showing behaviour of a maturity beyond his years. All this confuses the film's audience even further. Perhaps the fact itself that the movie asks these questions is to it's credit; but it ultimately fails to deliver on it's promise.

Loverboy brilliantly lays parental love out on the table for all of us to observe in two of its twisted, unbalanced forms. The first is that of young Emily's parents, played sublimely by both director Kevin Bacon, and Marisa Tomei, who think that parenting consists of modeling love by bathing together with the door open and constantly cuddling in front of the child, as though she would be nurtured by having a pair of super-sexed hippie babysitters for guardians. The two are a riot, as is Sosie Bacon, playing with her real-life dad, a girl who sings a Bowie song in a school show in order to shock her parents into caring about her. These flashbacks are intricately woven together with the scenes of the adult Emily, played by Bacon's real wife, Kyra Sedgwick, as she raises her six-year-old Paul (Dominic Scott Kay) on her own, calling him Loverboy. Master Kay holds his own as the increasingly suffocated son, trying to escape his mother's web of the other kind of unbalanced love, being kept "safe" and "smart" and unsullied by society. We feel deeply for Paul, hoping that he will be allowed to stay in school as Emily descends heartbreakingly into madness, fearful that the school is poisoning her child. We pray that Matt Dillon, as a friendly fisherman, will be allowed to take Paul for a "boys only" fishing trip, but even then, the desperate Emily stands on the shore screaming at them to be safe while they're trying to have a few bonding moments together. The movie moves and looks like a dream, and like a dream, it has an explosive, cathartic ending that you have to wake up from. The Bacons in every way have put together a searing work of art, beautifully acted, shot and mounted, that should haunt anyone who can identify with its universally tragic themes.

A very fanciful film about a woman who grew up without parents (for all intents and purposes) and who is abandoned by the only maternal figure in her life, (the neighbor) who grows up to be an obsessive and controlling mother who's entire world revolves around her little boy. He is home-schooled and kept from any other kids his own age, his mother wanting desperately for him to stay not only her little boy, but also her best friend, forever. Through many flashbacks (all done in a very rosy colored lens and 'artistic' camera movements) we learn how strange and lonely her childhood was, by way of being an excuse for how she turned out.All in all, this movie had potential. It's an interesting, if not groundbreaking, concept, with a cast that should at least peak your interest. Once you get into the movie, you immediately notice that Kevin decided that this would be an 'Art Movie', going for the over-reaching yet badly executed camera work and over uses his color filters and softening lenses. Although built on a good premise, the movie never gives you the incentive to get involved with the characters, and there is little to no development. It lacks the meat you want in an art movie, and the charm you expect from an out-of-mainstream flick.My impression? It's not dismal, because it's never extreme enough for that. It gives the impression that it was directed by a first-time to Hollywood director, who called in a few favors cast wise. Not worth it.