Desperate for Love

1989
4.9| 1h33m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 17 January 1989 Released
Producted By: Lorimar Television
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Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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The story of murder among a trio of teenagers after a boy breaks up with a girl and she runs into the arms of his vulnerable best friend.

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Director

Michael Tuchner

Production Companies

Lorimar Television

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Desperate for Love Audience Reviews

Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.
Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.
Aiden Melton The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.
Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
ruffrider I stumbled onto this while channel surfing and after sampling a few minutes I didn't want to turn it off. The all-too-familiar love triangle theme is played out with two best friends in high school, torn apart by sultry sexpot and fellow classmate Lily, who'll do anything (and any one) to get her out of this hick town. She bounces back and forth between confident jock Alex and his shy pal Cliff, who's always there to pick up the pieces when Alex lets her down. In spite of the strain Lily puts on their friendship the 2 boys manage to hang through it all - until Alex disappears after a hunting trip with Cliff. When Alex's body is found the police pick up Cliff immediately, as the love triangle was no secret to anyone. Before Cliff's arrest Lily had tried desperately to get him to confess, but to no avail. While almost everything points to Cliff as the culprit, Lily's father should also have been under suspicion, for he had threatened Alex to keep him away from Lily and he's also no slouch with a rifle.As the shooting was never shown, everyone's in the dark when the murder trial begins, including the audience. Lily's betrayal of gullible Cliff on the witness stand seams to be sealing his fate when he throws his hat in the ring for her yet again and decides to plead guilty to manslaughter to save Lily from further grueling cross-examination on the witness stand. His gallantry earns him 8 years in prison and left me wondering what about the ballistics evidence? The bullet(s) in Alex' body should have pointed to the culprit as the one who's rifle matched the bullets, but such trifles are never mentioned. Thus we never find out for sure who killed Alex, but at least the producers were kind enough to show the terms of Cliff's sentence in the screen credits at the end. And now that the movie's over, who killed Alex? I'm still wondering.The actors are quite competent and here's a chance to see a very young Christian Slater before he became famous. Tammy Lauren is fetching and believable as the poor "white trash" girl who knows what she's got and how to use it to bring the hormones of teen-aged boys to a boil. As Cliff's attorney for the defense puts it, she thinks she's been spending all her time looking for "L-O-V-E," when the operative word should be "S-E-X." The movies's final scene shows Lily, looking depressed and leaning against the mill where she lured the boys for those "love" trysts. Now she must face her own fate as a pariah, still stuck in this future-less town, knowing she's ruined lives and families. Clearly she's serving out her own sentence, but one feels it isn't long or harsh enough.
kletkeman Paid less than the price of a rental for the DVD, but it was clearly printed from a VHS tape in mediocre condition. The editing was brutal, but I'm not sure that it was the tape's fault, I think the software used to master the DVD was crap. The result is a very chopped (jarring) feeling ... I felt like the last 10 seconds of every major segment was lost.Anyway ... the acting is quite good in my opinion. Christian Slater gives a good account of himself, but it's another dark performance, which is his specialty. The girl emotes well, as does the mother. All in all, I found it easy to get and stay in the story.The plot is pretty standard, but since it is based on true events, it would be kind of hard to criticize on that anyway. I have to say that I enjoyed it. It is certainly worth the low price being charged these days, especially if you like Christian Slater.
jklm94 although i am not a big fan of either Christian Slater or Brian Bloom i found this movie as okay as one could say about any other made-for-TV movie. there were too many times where i felt like i was left hanging, too much i had to add to the story to have it make sense and DID HE DO IT OR DID HE NOT? if he loved Lily enough to go to jail for murder, did he love her enough to commit murder????? i guess i and others asking the same question will never know. i got this movie out of a $0.88 bin and it was worth every penny, if i had paid $0.99 then that would be a whole new story!!!! it's a good movie to watch when you don't really feel like watching a movie, you don't want to concentrate on a story line, and you could even be happy calling it an early night and passing out on the couch. i would recommend it to those with great patience and little opinion.
lizard7-1 Okay, so the movie wasn't bad. It had an interesting plot and the actors shined. Christian Slater was excellent (was there ever a doubt? The man is a genius) and so was the rest of the characters. There was only one hole in the whole movie- the ending. It was just too "cliff hanger-ish" Sure, there was a definite outcome, but it didn't satisfy the viewer. It is not an awful movie (not like that sad Notting Hill) but it was no Double Jeopardy either. On a scale from 1-10 I would give it a 6. I don't think it would be a COMPLETE waste of time to see it.