Loverboy (2004)

Garbage Masquerading As Art

Is there anything
amusing, lighthearted or redeeming
about extreme psychological illness,
sexual depravity, child abuse, suicide
and attempted murder?
This movie would have you think so.
There is no reason to view this film
and numerous reasons not to.
Do not be seduced by its pedigree.
It's technical merit is wasted. June 10, 2008

"Has a mother ever loved her son more?"

I rented this movie on a whim because I remembered the trailer being pretty interesting. Let me just say that I was not disappointed. Kyra Sedgwick was brilliant as Emily, and I was really able to identify with her. As a mother of a two-year-old boy, I found the first three-fourths of this movie to be oddly inspiring. Possibly due to my young age of 21, I've never wanted to be the typical soccer-mom so I found Emily's eclectic style of parenting to be rather appealing. For example, the splatter-painting Paul's room, camping out in the backyard, the 'roam abouts', etc. One of my absolute favorite scenes is where Emily plays an invisible flute in the rain as Paul conducts (if anyone knows the name of the song, please let me know). On the other hand, Emily's obsession went off the deep end towards the end of the movie and you can actually see her just going over the edge as Paul pushes for more independence. All of that being said, I think that it's much easier for a mother to sympathize with Emily rather than condemn her in the end. This has definitely become my favorite movie just because it is so different, and so sadly beautiful. I also picked up the book a few weeks ago, and it was wonderful as well.
July 31, 2007

poignant and somewhat disturbing

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.
June 5, 2007

Lets not put lipstick on the pig .. its a psychopath movie!

Actually I don't really like psychopath movies and I'm a little bugged out that the 'previews' pushed the concept of 'an overy obsessive mother' wanting to have the perfect child. Trust me that is not the case with the kind of ending this movie dumped on my lap .....


OK the good thing about the movie and it's time warp meandering meant that I didn't know how it was going to end, but, of course even though it had all the elements that our heroine would any minute fall on the right track, way down deep, I knew it wasn't going to end well.....


To make matters worse I'm not a big fan of Kyra Sedgewick and her TV series but she certainly was stupendous in this movie and with that smoking hot body .... well nuff said ...... May 19, 2007

Tries but doesn't quite succeed

Kyra Sedgwick turns in a fine performance as a woman obsessed with having a perfect child. But somehow, the film just plods along without becoming as disturbing as it should have been.
March 3, 2007

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