Lover Boy

Directed by Joan Micklin Silver, Lover Boy follows Patrick Dempsey’s Randy Bodek as he inadvertently becomes a gigolo shortly after starting a job at a pizza joint. It’s a decidedly larger-than-life setup that’s employed to affable yet entirely forgettable effect by Silver, as the filmmaker, working from a script by Robin Schiff, Tom Ropelewski, and Leslie Dixon, delivers an easygoing comedy that generally coasts on the charm of its exceedingly eclectic cast – with Dempsey’s agreeable efforts here matched by a roster of such talented periphery players as Kirstie Alley and Carrie Fisher. The movie, which generally unfolds exactly as one might’ve anticipated, boasts a bubbly, 1980s-centric feel that tends to compensate for its less-than-appealing elements (eg the undercurrent of gay panic), while Silver does a decent job of exploiting the inherently over-the-top nature of the admittedly ludicrous premise (eg Randy almost has sex with his mom). There are a handful of lulls here and there, admittedly, and some of the picture’s comedic set-pieces aren’t quite as hilarious as Silver has obviously intended, but Lover Boy is, for the most part, an entirely harmless (and entertainingly dated) piece of work that could’ve been a whole lot worse.

**1/2 out of ****