Love Object (2004)
Directed by Robert Parigi
Written by Robert Parigi
Starring Desmond Harrington, Melissa Sagemiller, Rip Torn
Release Date February 14th, 2004
Published July 18th, 2004
I like movies with a twisted sense of humor or morality. Often the best films with that twisted sense of right and wrong, or moral and immoral, break with conventional Hollywood standards of filmmaking and that is always a welcome sight.
However, being different and having that twisted sense is not entirely enough. A film must still be well made and entertaining. The new video Love Object has that twisted quality but is lacking a number of essential elements in great filmmaking.
Desmond Harrington, best known as Eliza Dushku's love interest in Wrong Turn, stars as Kenneth, an office drone who writes instruction manuals and little else. Kenneth is quiet and unassuming with that creepy quality people always describe after they find their quiet neighbor was hiding severed heads in his fridge. Regardless of Kenneth's lacking social skills, his boss Mr. Novak (Rip Torn) respects his ability to get the job done fast and for his next assignment gives Kenneth his first assistant.
The assistant is a beautiful blonde temp typist named Lisa (Melissa Sagemiller, Soul Survivor). She is also quiet and unassuming but far less creepy than Kenneth. Lisa has that librarian quality, dowdy with the potential to be a hotty. That is certainly the quality that Kenneth sees in Lisa as he begins fantasizing about her.
Kenneth's fantasies are stoked by another new friend, an inanimate sex doll. After overhearing some guys at work describe this love doll, Kenneth orders one, customized to resemble Lisa. From there things only get weirder. Lisa is honestly attracted to Kenneth and he seems to resemble a normal human being for a time until he stops customizing the doll and begins customizing Lisa, buying her clothes and making her resemble the doll.
For a time the film, written and directed by Robert Parigi, reminds us a lot of last year’s best film, the horror film May. However this script is not as clever as Lucky McKee's and Desmond Harrington lacks the sympathetic sadness of Angela Bettis. Harrington never develops that unique quality to make you feel for him while he does things that go against anything you should ever have sympathy for. The film is also far more predictable than May, until its ending where Love Object takes a twist that is entirely off the wall but not in a good way.
For her part Melissa Sagemiller is admirable in a very underwritten role. The focus of the film is unquestionably on Harrington and that leaves little room for Sagemiller to make an impression aside from being very attractive.
Behind the camera for the first time, Robert Parigi does create a terrifically subversive atmosphere but he just can't maintain it. There is some good stuff in there but in the end Love Object is an occasionally creepy, weird funny movie but also derivative and by the end completely over the top and off-putting.
