Desperate for Love

although i am not a big fan of either Christian Slater or Brian Bloom i found this movie as okay as one could say about any other made-for-TV movie. there were too many times where i felt like i was left hanging, too much i had to add to the story to have it make sense and DID HE DO IT OR DID HE NOT? if he loved Lily enough to go to jail for murder, did he love her enough to commit murder????? i guess i and others asking the same question will never know. i got this movie out of a $0.88 bin and it was worth every penny, if i had paid $0.99 then that would be a whole new story!!!! it's a good movie to watch when you don't really feel like watching a movie, you don't want to concentrate on a story line, and you could even be happy calling it an early night and passing out on the couch. i would recommend it to those with great patience and little opinion.

I stumbled onto this while channel surfing and after sampling a few minutes I didn't want to turn it off. The all-too-familiar love triangle theme is played out with two best friends in high school, torn apart by sultry sexpot and fellow classmate Lily, who'll do anything (and any one) to get her out of this hick town. She bounces back and forth between confident jock Alex and his shy pal Cliff, who's always there to pick up the pieces when Alex lets her down. In spite of the strain Lily puts on their friendship the 2 boys manage to hang through it all - until Alex disappears after a hunting trip with Cliff. When Alex's body is found the police pick up Cliff immediately, as the love triangle was no secret to anyone. Before Cliff's arrest Lily had tried desperately to get him to confess, but to no avail. While almost everything points to Cliff as the culprit, Lily's father should also have been under suspicion, for he had threatened Alex to keep him away from Lily and he's also no slouch with a rifle.

As the shooting was never shown, everyone's in the dark when the murder trial begins, including the audience. Lily's betrayal of gullible Cliff on the witness stand seams to be sealing his fate when he throws his hat in the ring for her yet again and decides to plead guilty to manslaughter to save Lily from further grueling cross-examination on the witness stand. His gallantry earns him 8 years in prison and left me wondering what about the ballistics evidence? The bullet(s) in Alex' body should have pointed to the culprit as the one who's rifle matched the bullets, but such trifles are never mentioned. Thus we never find out for sure who killed Alex, but at least the producers were kind enough to show the terms of Cliff's sentence in the screen credits at the end. And now that the movie's over, who killed Alex? I'm still wondering.

The actors are quite competent and here's a chance to see a very young Christian Slater before he became famous. Tammy Lauren is fetching and believable as the poor "white trash" girl who knows what she's got and how to use it to bring the hormones of teen-aged boys to a boil. As Cliff's attorney for the defense puts it, she thinks she's been spending all her time looking for "L-O-V-E," when the operative word should be "S-E-X." The movies's final scene shows Lily, looking depressed and leaning against the mill where she lured the boys for those "love" trysts. Now she must face her own fate as a pariah, still stuck in this future-less town, knowing she's ruined lives and families. Clearly she's serving out her own sentence, but one feels it isn't long or harsh enough.

Christian Slater is Number 10 on my list of favorite actors, so I bet you're anticipating a splendid review of this movie. Not!! First of all, it's a TV movie--which I didn't know before watching it--and I'm not part of the "Lifetime Movie of the Week" crowd. I hardly consider anything that goes direct to network television (this excludes movies that goes direct to premium cable stations) actual "movies." So this was a supreme cheese-fest for me. Why it grabbed a 5.2 rating, which is high for a movie of this sort, is beyond comprehension. This is one of those movies you have to go rooting for in the 99-cent bin, and please realize there's a logical reasons why those movies are priced 99 cents! And may I add, the girl who plays Slater's love interest--I think her name's Tammy Lauren--is NOT an attractive woman! He'd HAVE to be desperate if he wants to get with that girl.

My advice to all those who appraise Christian Slater--DON'T GET SUCKED IN!!! Use that 99 cents you're about to spend on this movie to add to the ten or so bucks you're about to spend on "Very Bad Things" or "Untamed Heart."

Not Christian's best work.

My score: 1 (out of 10)

I am not a very big watcher of the Lifetime network, but the other night I caught this movie on and was instantly hooked. I was born in a town very similar to the one in which the characters are engulfed and I found the performances and direction to be frighteningly accurate. I had never heard of this movie and I was so impressed that Christian Slater could give such a believable performance. I moved to Los Angeles California after high school and now I live in Washington, D.C. I studied film and theatre so I lost my small southern town dialect, but movies that can truly capture the essence of the the lifestyle that these people must endure never fails to amaze me. I do not see it very often is a film, but "Desperate for Love" accomplished it magnificently.

Paid less than the price of a rental for the DVD, but it was clearly printed from a VHS tape in mediocre condition. The editing was brutal, but I'm not sure that it was the tape's fault, I think the software used to master the DVD was crap. The result is a very chopped (jarring) feeling ... I felt like the last 10 seconds of every major segment was lost.

Anyway ... the acting is quite good in my opinion. Christian Slater gives a good account of himself, but it's another dark performance, which is his specialty. The girl emotes well, as does the mother. All in all, I found it easy to get and stay in the story.

The plot is pretty standard, but since it is based on true events, it would be kind of hard to criticize on that anyway. I have to say that I enjoyed it. It is certainly worth the low price being charged these days, especially if you like Christian Slater.