Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Beautifully Acted, Disturbing Story About Obsessive Mothering, September 21, 2006
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. Grady Harp, September 06
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14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"My equation was: Many men equals no father,", September 23, 2006
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.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
This is a commendable effort from a first time Hollywood director., September 26, 2006
I was expecting a great movie from Kevin Bacon. The movie is OK, This novel turned motion picture debut by Kevin has all the ingredients of an interesting and moving film. Unfortunately these ingredients seem to fade away slowly as the film progresses.
Kyra Sedgwick who not only acts terrifically throughout the film, but also narrates it as well. Her character, a woman obsessed with having a child, and keeping it to herself forever, loses its flavor as it becomes more and more ridiculous. The small boy played by Dominic Scott Kay, should have been either re-cast or re-shot several times. His artificial deliveries take away from the seriousness of Sedgwicks maternal character again and again, and seem to make the film comical at times when it should not be. 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 her neighbor (Sandra Bullock) to be her mother. I will say that Kyra Sedgewick shows a great range of emotions and in certain parts, she has a strong resemblance to a younger Glenn Close. Mat Dillon, as a love interest, didn't work well into this screenplay, but Dillon did his best with the part he was given.
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. While watching this film you can't help but get the impression that this film was directed by a first-time Hollywood director, who called in a few favors from some of his famous friends.
Even though Kevin manage to give us an interesting plot his attempt wasn't completely successful. Beside that `LoverBoy' is a decent film provided by some great leading actors.
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