When Will I Be Loved

When Will I Be Loved gets off to a really bad start – director James Toback seems to have cut corners by not hiring extras, and as a result, we get a long sequence in which random bystanders just stare into the camera while two actors perform an astoundingly bad sequence that’s surely been improvised – and never entirely improves. Neve Campbell stars as a flirtatious young woman who finds herself embroiled in a scheme involving an old man, his money, and certain sexual favors. Toback, who also wrote the film’s screenplay, forces his characters to spout the most inane dialogue imaginable, which wavers between dull small talk and infuriating conversations in which people dance around the issue ceaselessly (does anybody talk like this?) Campbell is fine, though she’s hardly given anything to work with – she was far more effective in last year’s The Company. And Fred Weller, so good in The Shape of Things, hits all the wrong notes as an obnoxious hustler. Toback’s fluid camerawork is about the only intriguing aspect of When Will I Be Loved, though Mike Tyson’s inexplicable cameo as “Buck” has to be seen to be believed.

*1/2 out of ****