Loverboy

Kevin Bacon directs this bizarre story adapted by Hannah Shakespeare from Victoria Redel's novel about maternal obsession providing his wife Kyra Sedgwick with a role to spotlight just how fine an actress she truly is. The story is disturbing but vitally interesting. There are problems with the film, the most annoying one being that the dialogue is practically inaudible due to the miking and, more so, due to the musical score which covers all the lines to the point of making the movie seem like a silent movie with music from the pit! Such a shame, because it SEEMS like this is a good script with a lot to say.

Emily (Kyra Sedgwick) is damaged goods, a woman neglected as a child who is determined to have a baby and raise it on her own, lavishing the child with all the affection and attention she desperately missed. After numerous attempts to get pregnant from any available man, she finally succeeds impregnation with Campbell Scott and gives birth to Paul (Dominic Scott Kay) who becomes her entire reason for living. She sequesters Paul form the world, gives him everything a child could want - except association with peers. Her obsession grows to the point of mental illness and the results are devastating. Along the way Emily and Paul encounter people who seek to intervene in their lives: these people are played with great style by cameo roles of Sandra Bullock, Oliver Platt, Kevin Bacon, Marisa Tomei, Matt Dillon, Blair Brown and even some of the Bacon's own children! It is a star cast obviously committed to Kevin Bacon's vision of this star vehicle for Sedgwick.

The pacing, cinematography, and acting are all first rate. If only the ugly and senseless music hadn't submerged the dialogue (oddly enough the score was written by Michael Bacon!), this would be an Oscar contender.

I'm from Brazil, and I don't know how, but Loverboy is available in DVD in Brazil in every videostore...I rented it, I was expecting a great movie as the directional debut of Kevin Bacon, an actor that I think is one of a kind in his choices and performances...The movie is OK, it's about a super jealous mother(Kyra Sedgewick), that made everything to have a son and tries to create him in a world apart from everybody, but then the boy starts to have ''outside'' contacts, and wants to go to school and be a normal kid, and her mother starts going mad. She's that crazy because of her creation, and we learn from flashback scenes, that her parents(Kevin Bacon and Marisa Tomei) were really ''different'' and she wanted a neighbor(Sandra Bullock) to be her mother. Then there are parts involving the school and a beach-area, and then the finale, that's a bit forced, but I won't reveal anything, because it would ruin the surprise ending. The acting is really good: Kyra Sedgewick is really good here,she's in almost every scene and even that sometimes she overacts, she shows a great range of emotions,a great body(that her husband shows very much in the beginning...) and, in certain parts, she has a strong resemblance to a younger Glenn Close; the boy, who i don't know the name, also gives a bravura performance, as a starter he shows he has talent, sharing a good chemistry with Kyra, and making the ''rebel'' parts very believable; then there are smaller parts or even cameos by Kevin Bacon and Marisa Tomei as the fathers of the Kyra's character(Marisa overacts here, trying so hard to be a crazy bitch, with colorful clothes); Sandra Bullock as the mother rule-model to the girl-Kyra(She can't show real acting, her part is important, but very small); Mat Dillon as a love interest, (wich isn't well worked in the screenplay, with Dillon doing the best he can with the part); Campbell Scott as the kid's father(that's a cameo); and Oliver Platt as a school worker(nothing important...). The flaws are over the screenplay, that never goes deep in the mother's craziness, and has some confusing parts as the one that happens in the beach and the soundtrack, that is a bit goofy and too funny, when it needed to be more serious. Anyway, this is a good movie, not great not bad, with some flaws but also with some very good stuff, as the acting of the two leads. The disappointment I said, came from the fact that I was waiting something more serious and edgy from Kevin Bacon as a director, not a dramedy, that is what the movie ends being.

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.

Kevin Bacon is a fine actor, and I was looking forward to this, his debut as a director. He's certainly worked with some of the best in the business, and one would hope that he'd picked up some great lessons in film making.

But this film, sadly, doesn't offer us much.

I believe the two main reasons it doesn't work are the script, and the casting of Kyra Sedgewick, Mr. Bacons real life wife.

The script is pretentious and humorless and forced, and Ms. Sedgewick, a fine actress with a beautiful body (shown off here quite often) is almost fetishized by her husband in this film- to the detriment of the story itself.

It's a film chock-a-block with celebrity cameos, everyone from Matt Dillion to Sandra Bullock to Campbell Scott and Marisa Tomei, and no one really survives it.

I will say this though- it is a BOLD failure, and I do look forward to what Mr. Bacon can do with a half decent script. He (and we) deserve better.

I wasn't sure what I was getting into when I first started watching this, as it seems to launch into a sort of twisted edgy comedy at first, but as this film progresses, this story and the situations become very serious, compelling . . . and sad.

The ending is particularly gripping, certainly not what would be expected from the beginning of this film. Everyone does a very fine job of professional acting at its best, but in this work, Kyra Sedgwick really shines.

I don't think there is any other actress that I could think of who could possibly have delivered the embodiment of the Emily character more perfectly . . . she really shines in this role.

The story itself can be a bit hard to go along with if you have had a parental / family experience with certain neurotic or other difficult psychological challenges. I have, and in some ways could really identify with various aspects of this story and its characters.

This is not a light hearted film, despite its somewhat comedic beginning, but it is very well done.

I liked it, as a fine example of the craft of acting, and for a truly unique story worthy of note.