performance issue - lower framerate = lower game speed?

I have a pretty crappy laptop (1.3 GHz Core 2 Duo, Intel 4500mhd), but it would be fine if the game was not so tied to its framerate.  Am I correct that the lower the framerate drops below 60, the slower the gameplay is?  Is there any way to just let it run at a lower framerate but full speed like most games allow?  30-40 fps is perfectly playable in most games, but in Saira it's like slo motion on those screens.  The only other game I am aware of that behaves the same way is Eschalon.  And Beyond Divinity I guess, but that one is full of issues anyway.

This is unavoidable. The frame rate doesn't drop and as result the game is slow, but the game is slow, and as a result the framerate drops.

All right, I guess I have no choice but to add it to the list of games I may play once I get around to fixing my desktop.  That's too bad, I beat Super Meat Boy on this laptop (well, the Light World anyway), even though some levels I had to reduce the resolution to 640x480, it was very playable at 30 fps.