Loverboy

Adapted from a novel by Victoria Redel, this 2005 feature starts off as a vulgar comedy and then turns serious, as a neglected girl with no taste for romance grows up to become a possessive single mother (Kyra Sedgwick) who lives only for her son. Kevin Bacon, making his theatrical feature debut as director, wrests decent performances from the cast, which includes Marisa Tomei, Matt Dillon, Campbell Scott, Oliver Platt, and Sandra Bullock. But the movie seems miscalculated on so many levels that it’s hard to know whether to blame Hannah Shakespeare’s tortured and semicoherent script, with its ill-defined characters and cumbersome flashbacks, or Bacon’s fancy cutting and self-conscious flurries of slow motion. R, 84 min. (JR)

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