Love You to Death

"Love You to Death" is a profound and powerfully disturbing movie about the relationship between Esmé Stoller (Emily Skaggs) and her mom Camile (Marcia Gay Harden, a far more illustrious "name" than we're used to seeing on Lifetime). Esmé is in a wheelchair, she's bald (there's a fascinatingly cruel scene in which we see her mom shaving her head) and she's been told she has had bone cancer since she was 4. Writer Anthony Jaswinski and director Alex Kalymnikos tell this story from both mother's and daughter's point of view, and the result is a powerful, chilling fable about just how far certain people will go to feel "loved" and "needed." I'm rating it nine stars instead of 10 because the switch from Camile's to Esmé's point of view about a third of the way through is awkward and writer Jaswinski could have had an even deeper and more profound movie if he'd used the "Citizen Kane" narratage technique and told the Stollers' story from the various points of view of the people involved in it. But that doesn't take away from what he, Kalymnikos and their stars (not only Harden and Skaggs but Brennan Keel Cook as Esmé's boyfriend Scott) achieved with a film that's excellent by any standards and especially amazing coming from Lifetime.

The act is so much better- this isn't the worst movie ever Marcia gay harden is really good. But it feels really rushed!!!!

When you have an outstanding performance from Patricia Arquette and Joey King in The Act, this film fails short, it's a remagining and based on the true story but at times its more visual than trying to tell you the story.

There is more music and artistic scenes than dialogue. That should probably give you a clue to not expect a riveting experience from the actors and actresses. Yes, it's based in a true story, but man, did they tone the real problem down when they focused a ton on the daughter and her boyfriend's "beautiful love scenes" first in a convention with a wig in a wheelchair, to a wig in a bed, and to a pool when the wig finally comes off. Ok, we get the symbolism of losing the wig with him. But um, I think he knew she wasn't faking when she walked and was banging him in bed and she lost her innocence when she became honest to someone other than her mother. Really disappointed in this. Did enjoy all the piano music in it though, especially considering I switched to reading a book during this disaster, it really provided nice quite background music.

If you've never watched anything related to this story before, please don't start with this movie. It completely downplays the real story and kills every interesting part of it.

First off, I don't really understand why another adaptation to the same story was even needed to begin with - there were multiple documentaries covering it already (I recommend "Mommy Dead and Dearest" the most), as well as the drama series "The Act", all of which were much closer to the real story than this.

But if you are already making a movie that might introduce new people to the story, at least do it well. This movie was not only super different than the actual story, but has also completely cut out all of the really shocking and interesting parts of the story, some of which were very important parts of this story that were not even slightly mentioned here, making the story in the movie much more dull and boring compared to the real one. And then there are the parts of the story that were included here, but those were changed so much that they have ruined the whole build up into the finale (which as I mentioned before, was nowhere near as shocking as the real story).

This is such a poor adaptation to the story, that I feel like the only way anyone could enjoy it is if they've never heard of the story before, but if you've never watched it before, then what reason would you have to start with this failed attempt to present the story when there are so many better alternatives out there?

If they were going to change so much, I feel like they should have went completely different and do something like the movie "Run" did where it's just a complete fiction story about the same condition, but this movie was clearly trying to tell Gypsy's specific story, which is why it being done in such a poor way is so disappointing.

So as someone who is really familiar with this story and has watched anything possible related to it, I can't stress any more how much I recommend that you don't start with this movie as your introduction.