Loverboy
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Movie Reviews of Loverboy
Movie Review: poignant and somewhat disturbing
Summary: 4 Stars
I had no idea this movie was based on a novel. Had I known that, I would have read the book first. It was a very dramatic film but is not a complete downer. It had a bittersweet ending which took me by surprise, although the first segment of the ending is predictable. I would have preferred to have the ending the same way it happened in the book, but Kevin Bacon decided to change it to show the beauty and value of the relationship between Kyra Sedgwick's character and her son Paul.
Basically, this story is about a woman who grew up being neglected by her parents and demonstrates what can and does happen when the child grows up. Neglecting children is often worse than physically abusing them. One of the strange things about humans is that whatever terrorizes and tramatizes us in childhood, becomes a source of attraction later in life. In this film we see a woman who was tramatized by neglect from her parents (physically, emotionally and mentally). Her parents always put her down, embarrassed her, showed her hardly any affection. Her parents were so close to each other yet so far from her. As the little girl becomes a woman, she becomes a loner or an outcast and is eccentric. When she has a child by some random man she hooked up with, she becomes close to the child, yet so far from him. So far from him in that she doesn't care about his true feelings and doesn't care about him as a person and this is the same thing which traumitized her as a child (neglect). All she is wants from him is love... forever.
Movie Review: good movie
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this movie not thinking that it would be that great..Well when I saw it I was very happy that I bought this movie...Its a story that can be so true and so sad but there are some mothers like the person in the move...I would say if you are looking for a movie that is a little twisted that is base on real life then this is a movie to see.Movie Review: "My equation was: Many men equals no father,"
Summary: 3 Stars
Obviously a vanity project by Kevin Bacon for his lovely wife Kyra Sedgwick, Loverboy features a bizarre almost startling performance by Sedgwick. Put the whole movie down as an admirable failure, it's a good try, but the movie is constantly at odds with itself as though Bacon is struggling to achieve the right form and tone.
From the opening scenes we know there is something not quite right with Emily Stoll (Sedgwick). She's a 30-ish single woman whose parents have left her a large trust fund. She conveniently doesn't have to work and has no interest in establishing a conventional home or relationships. All she wants is a child and is determined to have one by any means necessary.
She travels the country in search of men whose genetic material meets her exacting standards. After countless fruitless sexual encounters - including a quickie amongst the stacks of a library - Emily returns to her home in Chicago dispirited and at a loss. Finally, however, gets pregnant by a poetic commodities trader (Campbell Scott) whom she meets in the elevator.
Nine months later, voila: a child is born unto her, she names him Paul and in a voice over, she describes her son's early years as some kind of idyllic existence. The story then jumps to when Paul (Dominic Scott Kay) is 6-years-old and developing an independent streak -- which mom views as a full-blown crisis, trouble sets in when Paul asks to go to school and mix with all the other boys and girls.
Home-schooled in bizarre, haphazard fashion by an overeducated mother with no grasp of age-appropriate teaching, he quickly tires of Mum's games and camping out in the back yard. Because Emily is unhinged from the start and wants Paul all to herself, she takes Paul on an abrupt "vacation" trip to a remote, off-season coastal cottage where they can be alone together.
But even here there are nosy, overfriendly neighbors, with whom Paul gets along dismayingly well, especially the hunky geologist/fisherman Mark (a really hot Matt Dillon), who clearly wouldn't mind completing the "family" as husband and father. As Emily feels as though she's beginning to lose control of Paul, her world begins to spiral out of control and she panics even more when he eventually goes to school and she can't bear her "genius" son to become "just" a normal kid.
Periodically Bacon inserts flashbacks starring himself and Marisa Tomei as Emily's mother and father and Sandra Bullock as a kindly and hip neighbor in a half-hearted attempt to explain why she turned out the way she did. Emily's feelings of security were crushed by her parents who were too absorbed in each other to take much of an interest in their little girl.
Apart from the awkward structure, what stops this film being a good film is the intrusive soundtrack that seems to deaden much of the obsessive mother-son drama-taking place. Likewise the visual aspects are muddled with interludes of soft-focus, skewed angles and distorted lenses. If all this means to illustrate that Emily lives in a dream world, it backfires - her hyper-controlling nature is at odds with a showy production that's all over the map.
Sedgwick is very good here; it's just a pity that she can never seem to rise above the material she's been given. Meanwhile, the events leading up to the fateful climax feel like they're taken from a completely different movie. There are some nice moments, and even disturbing ones - but the over-stylized gimmicky production values that don't really work end up hampering and weighing down what could possibly have been a good film. Mike Leonard September 06.
Movie Review: (2.5 STARS) Good Story Buried Somewhere in the Film's Complicated Narrative
Summary: 3 Stars
Kevin Bacon's debut as feature film director has gifted actors as the cast: in addition to Kyra Sedgwick who plays the overprotective mother, the film has cameos from Matt Dillion, Campbell Scott, Oliver Platt, Sandra Bullock, Marisa Tomei and Kevin Bacon himself. No wonder someone thought of "Six Steps to Kevin Bacon" game.
Kyra Sedgwick plays Emily, a possessive mother who would not let her only son Paul or her "Loverboy" go outside the world she created for him. But as Paul grows up, he refuses to stay where he is now, disobeying his own mother. He wants to go to school (Emily wouldn't allow that); he wants to live like any other kids in the neighborhood, and so on, but the mother who loves her son too much sees things differently.
That much I knew before watching the film, but `Loverboy' proved to be also another thing to me. Kyra Segdwick's character is at times treated with upbeat touch especially when she is trying to be pregnant, and her character is interesting to see at first with some humor in her. She is not particularly sympathetic, but the script at least attempts to delve into the inner darkness or loneliness behind her beauty and confidence, and it succeeds to some extent when Campbell Scott briefly appears before her in a hotel room.
But here is another thing I didn't expect, and that's frequent flashbacks where Emily's childhood is depicted. The film reverts to the days when Emily was a lonely ten-year-old girl (played by Kyra Sedgwick's own daughter Sosie) over and over again, and the portraits of Emily's swinging-70s parents (played by Marisa Tomei and Kevin Bacon). The repetitious scenes never convince us why the husband and wife who love each other so much should neglect their own daughter, or why she must seek for help in her neighbor Mrs. Harker (effective Sandra Bullock).
My impression is that for all its short running time (that is less than 90 minutes) `Loverboy' tries to show too many things in it. We don't need slant camera angel or Kyra Sedgewick's sexy dress here (do we?) when it is her character that really matters. The film's tone is often inconsistent (some scenes are a bit too silly to me) with its intricate narrative style, which should be more simple. I really like Kyra Sedgewick with her acting (or overacting) in this film, but its story can be more effectively told in the right order.
Movie Review: MOTHERLY LOVE
Summary: 3 Stars
Sometimes even when a movie is competently made and features fine performances, you have to wonder - "Why was the story ever written and what should we feel about it?"
That's the problem with Kevin Bacon's LOVERBOY. Starring his wife Kyra Sedgwick (THE CLOSER), this film is a tragic, bitter look at a mother's obsessive love for her son. An overly theatrical narrative by Kyra lets us know right away about her sexual promiscuity, moving from city to city and even using the sperm bank to mother "the perfect child." When a chance encounter with a handsome businessman finally results in her conception, she gives birth to Paul (whom she calls LOVERBOY). Paul is a bright, sensitive child and well played by Dominic Scott Kay. But mama's love is unusually abnormally obsessive; she doesn't want to share him with anyone and ultimately makes him almost a prisoner. Little Paul, however, wants a father's love and wants desperately to be normal. Much of the action takes place inside a car and it isn't long before you can pretty much predict where the film is going.
Sedgwick gives a dark, disturbing performance, but she's not likeable and attempts at justifying her behavior don't really condone her actions. There are a lot of "cameo" style performances from Blair Brown as a neighborly neighbor; Matt Damon as a handsome fisherman who tries to give Paul some masculine attention; Campbell Scott as the father whose one night stand produces Paul; Sandra Bullock as a mysterious neighbor lady whose relationship with Kyra is never fully realized; director Bacon and Marisa Tomei are seen in flashbacks as Kyra's weird, hippie parents; and Oliver Platt is a school worker with interests in Kyra's odd behavior. Bacon captures some wonderful images and the movie is certainly earnest in its presentation, but it's such a downer I can't fully understand what the movie's purpose is.