By Jae-Ha Kim
Amazon.com
July 29, 2006
A quirky film about a single mother and the suffocating, tragic love she has for her 6-year-old child, Loverboy serves as an answer to anyone who might wonder if you can love your child too much: Absolutely. Emily (Kyra Sedgwick from The Closer) is an eccentric, anti-social woman yearning for the affection her parents showered on each other, but never on her. All her hopes and dreams are thrust upon her young son Paul (Dominic Scott Kay).
Not only is adorable, but he’s also incredibly mature and patient. Though his mother lavishes him with attention, gourmet meals, and an almost fairytale existence, Paul wants stability and normalcy. He yearns for a father. He wants to go to school with the other kids. And though he’s only 6, he’s old enough to know that having a mother who refers to him as “Loverboy” is just plain wrong. Directed by Sedgwick’s husband, Kevin Bacon (The Woodsman, Mystic River), the film veers unsteadily between ironic comedic moments and touching drama.
Full of cameos (Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Oliver Platt, Marisa Tomei, and Bacon, who plays Emily’s father in flashback sequences), the film does a fine job of conveying Emily’s desperation to be the only person who matters to Paul. But because she’s such a manipulative freak, it’s difficult for the viewer to feel much empathy for her as she tries to shelter her boy from the world.
“There’s no falling in love like the falling in love with a child,” she says early in the movie.
Ultimately, that’s her downfall.
