LOVERBOY (2006) *** Kyra Sedgwick, Dominic Scott Kay, Matt Dillon, Blair Brown, Oliver Platt, Campbell Scott, Kevin Bacon, Marisa Tomei, Sandra Bullock, Sosie Bacon, Travis Bacon, Jessica Stone, Melissa Errico, Nancy Giles, Carolyn McCormick, Spencer Treat Clark, Valyn Hall. (Dir: Kevin Bacon)
Sedgwick delivers the goods in this complicated drama.
Kyra Sedgwick is an underestimated and estimable actress who has done some exceptional yeoman work in her career (currently kicking ass as a quirky investigator on TNT's smash hit "The Closer") and in her latest foray on screen really gets to stretch her dramatic muscles in no small order through her real-life husband, fellow unsung actor Kevin Bacon, directing her as a single mother with a somewhat scary viewpoint on her life's mission: having and loving a son, all to herself.
We first see Emily (Sedgwick) attempting to find the perfect male to impregnate her with mixed results as she narrates her life's goal in obtaining fertilization to have a child to raise solely and exclusively. After several clumsy and unsatisfying experimental one-night stands Emily finally gets her wish after a dalliance with a handsome stranger named Paul (reuniting with her "Singles" co-star Scott) whose sobriquet she bequeaths to her infant. Shortly thereafter she buys a cozy home and raises Paul in a sheltered environment, home schooling the precocious boy (Scott Kay) as well as shunning him from any outside contact including children his age, neighbors and pretty much any and all human beings.
Emily's psychological scars are shown in flashbacks from her '70s era parents (Bacon and Tomei, essentially caricatures of the Me Decade in crazy outfits and bad hair) who more or less neglected her needs that she romanticizes with a neighborhood mother as her own prefabricated fantasy (Bullock in a smallish role). Emily attempts to be the perfect parent but fails to see how in fact she is in fact hindering her son (after all you can't spell smother without mother) who wants to be 'normal' by having parties, friends and attending school for real.
Based on a novel by Victoria Redel, the screenplay by Hannah Shakespeare depicts Emily as a possible threat to herself (and of course her boy) but there are some plot holes (where does Emily have the money & means to actually pay for a house in cash?!) and more questions than answers for how she was able to fly under the radar for six years in treating her son the way she does.
Bacon, making his big-screen directorial debut, showcases his wife's natural talents in making Emily sympathetic to a fault but then pulls the rug out from the viewer by the final act in depicting some cruelty and a questionable end that makes for a case of child abuse even more apparent. And yes that is their daughter and son Sosie and Travis as respectively Emily in the flashbacks and as Emily's neighborhood lawn mowing provider.
Again Sedgwick delivers a solid performance of such a frustrating character whose good intentions are curdled from the get go.
Sedgwick delivers the goods in this complicated drama.
Kyra Sedgwick is an underestimated and estimable actress who has done some exceptional yeoman work in her career (currently kicking ass as a quirky investigator on TNT's smash hit "The Closer") and in her latest foray on screen really gets to stretch her dramatic muscles in no small order through her real-life husband, fellow unsung actor Kevin Bacon, directing her as a single mother with a somewhat scary viewpoint on her life's mission: having and loving a son, all to herself.
We first see Emily (Sedgwick) attempting to find the perfect male to impregnate her with mixed results as she narrates her life's goal in obtaining fertilization to have a child to raise solely and exclusively. After several clumsy and unsatisfying experimental one-night stands Emily finally gets her wish after a dalliance with a handsome stranger named Paul (reuniting with her "Singles" co-star Scott) whose sobriquet she bequeaths to her infant. Shortly thereafter she buys a cozy home and raises Paul in a sheltered environment, home schooling the precocious boy (Scott Kay) as well as shunning him from any outside contact including children his age, neighbors and pretty much any and all human beings.
Emily's psychological scars are shown in flashbacks from her '70s era parents (Bacon and Tomei, essentially caricatures of the Me Decade in crazy outfits and bad hair) who more or less neglected her needs that she romanticizes with a neighborhood mother as her own prefabricated fantasy (Bullock in a smallish role). Emily attempts to be the perfect parent but fails to see how in fact she is in fact hindering her son (after all you can't spell smother without mother) who wants to be 'normal' by having parties, friends and attending school for real.
Based on a novel by Victoria Redel, the screenplay by Hannah Shakespeare depicts Emily as a possible threat to herself (and of course her boy) but there are some plot holes (where does Emily have the money & means to actually pay for a house in cash?!) and more questions than answers for how she was able to fly under the radar for six years in treating her son the way she does.
Bacon, making his big-screen directorial debut, showcases his wife's natural talents in making Emily sympathetic to a fault but then pulls the rug out from the viewer by the final act in depicting some cruelty and a questionable end that makes for a case of child abuse even more apparent. And yes that is their daughter and son Sosie and Travis as respectively Emily in the flashbacks and as Emily's neighborhood lawn mowing provider.
Again Sedgwick delivers a solid performance of such a frustrating character whose good intentions are curdled from the get go.