There may be nothing quite so fluid as teenage love, a wild emotion forged by raging hormones and a want for rebellion and forbidden exploration, all
fueled by peer pressure, media influence, and personal hopes and fantasies about the perfect match to ignite that spark and open a new world of
experiences both positive and negative. Spice things up with "mystery!" and "murder!" and behold the formulaic Love Me, a passably
watchable but ultimately
forgettable little romp through the world of teenage desires, young love, and a little bit of extracurricular mayhem. There's nothing like a relationship
defined by uncertain identities, a missing girl, and a police investigation to set the stage for the perfect romance. This is nothing audiences haven't
seen
before, but genre fans will probably want to cozy on up to Love Me for a fix of high calorie harmless cinema.
Love her.
Sylvia Potter (Lindsey Shaw) is a good girl. Her hobbies include painting miniatures and listening to music. One day at school, she trips over the
mysterious Lucas Green (Jamie Johnston), a good-looking fellow student on whom Sylvia has had her eye. Lucas makes her a mixed CD and before
she can hit "play," Sylvia finds herself falling head over heels for him. Some of her friends aren't too thrilled with the idea of a Sylvia-Lucas
relationship,
however. Her longtime friend Harry (Jean-Luc Bilodeau), a comic shop employee, harbors a secret crush on Sylvia, but Sylvia only sees him as a
good friend. Her best girlfriend Dayln (Kaitlyn Wong) digs a bit deeper into Lucas' past and discovers that he's the central suspect in a missing
person's case. Undeterred, Sylvia dives headfirst into her relationship with Lucas. Will her friends' suspicions prove correct, or will Sylvia find the
sort
of true love she's always wanted?
If Love Me feels familiar, if it seems there's some similarities to other films drifting through the theater, do not be alarmed. Love
Me
will remind audiences of everything from Scream to Cruel Intentions, not necessarily in broad plot strokes but through subtle
inferences and stylings in the way the film deals with falling for the wrong person, false fronts, deadly secrets, and so on and so forth, all the sorts of
things that make for juicy storytelling but not novel cinema. Director Rick Bota (Hellraiser: Hellseeker) and Writer Kat Candler (Jumping off
Bridges) wade through familiar territory and fail to create an authentic sense of tension and mystery as they explore the Sylvia-Lucas
relationship.
Part of the problem stems from the general transparency of the plot; it's not hard to guess who's behind the missing person mystery, and the result
is
a numbing of the film's various plot developments and secondary revelations, both of which lose momentum in the unimposing shadow of the
pending
final revelation. The film also simply fails to really grab its audience, to make viewers care about the characters on an intimate level and beyond the
general plot details. This is a film that simply goes through the motions and breathes no real, tangible life into its people or their plights. That
makes it subpar storytelling, but the good news is that the film isn't a total loss.
On the plus side, there's a real sense that the actors are doing their best to inject some feeling into the characters. Even as they simply carry on
everyday sort of cinema lives and as they try to understand their feelings both intimately and within a much broader context that involves the group
dynamic and the influence of the missing persons case hanging over much of what they do, the cast efforts to make the characters real people and
not simply scripted beings on a laser-guided collision course with the finale. The end result isn't Oscar-worthy acting or truly understandable
characters, but at least people worth rooting for along the way, even as Sylvia plods through all the usual "infatuation with a nice guy and his
quirks" bits and pieces while Lucas and Harry try to get through the classic "mystery men" portion of the script. The only actors who fail to bring
their characters to some semblance of life are the two cops who stiffen up and can't even manage the basic procedural elements of their terribly
generic prop-like characters that exist only to satisfy a plot requirement, not make the movie appreciably better.
Love Me features a pretty decent high definition transfer. Anchor Bay's 1.78:1 presentation offers a sharp, clean image sourced from HD video,
one that reveals consistently good facial textures throughout the film. Other details are presented nicely, too; brick and concrete surfaces around the
school, for example,
yield fine, natural lines and top-notch definition, even under what is a somewhat prominent glossy overlay. Colors are quite good, though often
influenced by a warm, golden tinting. Red bricks, natural greens, and more brilliant exterior hues look good; it's the interior scenes that tend to capture
that
unnatural warmth. Blacks and flesh tones both are solid and the latter only altered by individual scene content. Noise is minimal, soft shots are
relatively few, and no major bouts of blocking or other unwanted eyesores are present. Overall, this is a squeaky-clean image that handles the film's
rather mundane photography very well.
Love Me features a perfectly acceptable Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack. It's a basic presentation at its core with precious few moments
that stretch the system beyond general music and dialogue attributes. The good news is that these basic elements are handled quite nicely within
the context of a lesser-budgeted movie. Music isn't too terribly aggressive or immersive, but it does offer suitable clarity and good front-side spacing.
Whether deiberately scratchy vocals and crisp guitar notes at the beginning or slightly more aggressive notes later in the film, the track handles its music
smoothly and proficiently. There's very little in terms of pure ambience or surround activity. Dialogue is delivered cleanly and accurately from the
middle. This is a very basic presentation that does what's asked of it well enough; just don't expect the next adrenaline-fuled track.
Love Me contains two minor extras. 'Love Me:' Behind the Scenes (HD, 7:14) features cast and crew recounting the plot. 'Love Me:'
Stories from the Set (HD, 6:10) is a fancy name for what amounts to an enhanced gag reel that splices cast and crew interviews in between
bloopers.
Love Me never does quite grab its audience's attention as fully as the filmmakers might have hoped. That doesn't make it a bad movie.
Love Me manages to provide basic teenage drama-centered entertainment, taking its inspirations and stylings from elsewhere but reassembling
them into a dramatically competent and technically satisfying though ultimately forgettable picture. Love Me won't insult viewers, but it likely
won't leave them standing and applauding at the
end, either. Anchor Bay's Blu-ray release of Love Me features good video, fair audio, and a couple of throwaway extras. Worth a rental.
