I LOVED this flick! And I am not a movie person and only occasionally will I go to the video store. I am glad that I picked up this movie, although I usually pick up a movie when I know that Kyra is involved. I also like Kevin Bacon whom I first watched on the soap opera, The Guiding Light" some 26 years ago.I really connected with Emily's loneliness, her desire to create a family that would not desert her and her panic when she realizes that everybody leaves. And that it's OK to watch your birds fly out in the world. I was intrigued by the way that you are lead to the end of the story.My only sort of "complaint" is that at the very end, I would have liked to have less narration and more time to speculate internally.Thank you.

Interesting though thematically bludgeoned "family" film detailing the singular obsession Emily (Kyra Sedgwick) has for producing and raising her very own child. While layering a good amount of light-hearted humor into the affair, the movie is undoubtedly subversive in the process of relaying so many well meaning points. The unique material will most likely find an audience with females, and mothers in particular, having much less of a hold on the opposite sex. Although this material is presented in a somewhat compelling manner through the textured workings exuded from Segwick, the novel that this was adapted from clearly lost something in transition, from the competent though unimpressive pacing that stretches some time periods out too long- yet feels way abridged in others, to a just plain unfortunate air of mediocrity found throughout the production values. Not helping things much is Loverboy himself, played by an adorable, but immature Dominic Scott Kay, who crushes some of the realism with his performance. Even as original and interesting as Segwick's character seemed, I became less interested as the character became caricature, displayed through the eventual predictability of her unpredictability. While it was every intention of the film to associate this character with those attributes, what should have been her son's perception of her, ended up being mine as well, which somehow negated all of Krya's quieter, and effecting moments. Bacon himself deserves a job well done for an admirable debut behind the lens (except for not getting more damn re-shoots of that kid!), offering decent direction and a funny little role to boot. The script's insistence at repeating itself does grate a little but fortunately the themes do hold water in this one, although primarily for women and in a non-direct, after-effect sort of way, due to the sensitive though underdeveloped screenplay.

The problem with this film is that it tries to do too much. It is basically an attempt to describe the intergenerational dysfunctionality of the family of the main character, played ably at times by Kyra Sedgwick. Nevertheless, there are other moments when this female character, who is otherwise clearly possessed by numerous demons, just comes across as plain silly. Silliness isn't necessarily out of tune with what is really happening in this complex, but poorly-told tale; Kyra Sedwick's "parents" in the film are also silly, goofing around until the poignant moment when they realise their 10-year-old daughter singing David Bowie's "Life on Mars" acapella at her school's end-of-year show, is a reference to their freakishness. But the real, deep, important questions the movie raises are left frustratingly unaddressed and unanswered: how can two people who are so crazy about one another ignore the fruit of their love? When does a mother's love turn from genuine care into stifling, morbid possessiveness? At one point, the mother is trying to defend her refusal to let her son attend school by quoting Emerson and Alessandra Montessori; but it is never really clear just what it is she actually dreams for her son, other than always having him by her side. She confesses to the viewer, "I admit, I encouraged arrogance" in her son, but the boy is the only reasonable one of the pair, showing behaviour of a maturity beyond his years. All this confuses the film's audience even further. Perhaps the fact itself that the movie asks these questions is to it's credit; but it ultimately fails to deliver on it's promise.

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.