Illegally Yours (1988) – DVD
*/**** Image B Sound B
starring Rob Lowe, Colleen Camp, Kenneth Mars, Kim Myers
screenplay by M.A. Stewart & Max Dickens
directed by Peter Bogdanovich
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The '80s drove a lot of talented filmmakers to desperate lengths, but few sank to the levels of depravity that Peter Bogdanovich did with Illegally Yours. Like so many before him, the once-unstoppable cineaste was forced to rethink his auteurism along cheesy romantic-comedy lines; unlike so many before him, he chose to ignore the ugly implications of a disturbingly infantile screenplay, instead committing to a literal interpretation as tedious as it is unpleasant. Watching Rob Lowe pester a suffering woman on the flimsiest of pretexts isn't at all funny (it's like watching a stalker get rewarded for his predations), and as he's surrounded by some of the most irritating "hilarious" types ever to grace the screen, the only variation is in the switch from creepiness to frustrated annoyance.