20131220: Drama Review--Lovelace

Lovelace

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2013, rated R, 92 minutes, biography, drama.
2. IMDB: 6.1/10.0 from 12,910 audience ratings.  Estimated budget, 10 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 54% on the meter; 37% liked it from 9,813 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.4/5.0 from 201,979 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman.
6. Starring: Amanda Seyfried as Linda, Peter Sarsgaard as Chuck, Sharon Stone as Dorothy Boreman, Robert Patrick as John Boreman, Chris Noth as Anthony Romano, Bobby Cannavale as Butchie Peraino, Hank Azaria as Gerry Damiano, Adam Brody as Harry Reems, James Franco as Hugh Hefner.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Linda grows up in a repressive household, then marries a dominating husband, who eventually corners her into the porn industry.  She gets the job because Chuck had trained her to pleasure him orally, then took home movies of it.  The producers were enthused.


2. Deep Throat is hugely popular, and she gets a vanity film or two.  She is quite a sensation, and gets to know quite a number of influential people.  Then we jump forward six years to where Linda is into writing books.


3. The film progresses (?) into re-interpretations of what was shown in the first 20 minutes.  Most of the focus was on how stupid or bad the first husband, Chuck Traynor, was.  Clearly he was a bad businessmen.  Their mobster friends could have done much better.  Clearly he mistreated Linda.  On the other hand, the exposition of how Lovelace could have shifted from prostitute and porn star to moralistic author was weak to the point of non-existence.


4. Was Linda's second marriage better?  Did she really escape? The movie does not really address this at all.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Muddled account of Lovelace's sadly mismanaged life.
2. Two stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Well shot.


2. Sound: 8/10 The spoken voices fade away into nothing now and then.


3. Acting: 5/10 Cheers to James Franco, Chris Noth, Hank Azaria, Bobby Cannavale, Robert Patrick.  On the other hand, Amanda Siefried, Peter Sarsgaard, Adam Brody, and Sharon Stone just stank on ice.  I hope to avoid Amanda Siefried in all future roles; she was amazingly terrible here.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 I'm not sure what the story was.  The timeline is very confused.