Love Ranch (2010)
Average Rating: 3.7/10
Reviews Counted: 51
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 45
Despite its saucy setup and the always marvelous Helen Mirren, Love Ranch is disappointingly flaccid.
Average Rating: 3.5/10
Critic Reviews: 22
Fresh: 3 | Rotten: 19
Despite its saucy setup and the always marvelous Helen Mirren, Love Ranch is disappointingly flaccid.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.6/5
User Ratings: 1,152
My Rating
Movie Info
Director Taylor Hackford explores the rift that opens between Grace and Charlie Bontempo -- the husband-and-wife owners of Nevada's first legal brothel -- after ambitious entrepreneur Charlie attempts to expand his dominion by inviting South American heavyweight boxer Armando Bruza to train at the ranch. When passions ignite between Grace (Helen Mirren) and Armando (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), Charlie's jealousy threatens to be the wrecking ball that brings his entire empire crumbling to the ground.
Jun 30, 2010 Wide
Nov 9, 2010
$0.1M
E1 Entertainment
Watch It Now
Cast
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Helen Mirren
Grace -
Joe Pesci
Charlie Bontempo -
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-
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Sergio Peris-Mencheta
Bruza
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All Critics (51) | Top Critics (22) | Fresh (6) | Rotten (45)
Once Hackford has committed to the characters and to their compelling (if dark) world, he has nowhere to go but to some predecided facts that might not be the most interesting end to the characters' journey.
The only vaguely interesting aspect to this film is the subplot involving a past-his-prime Argentinian heavyweight owned by Charlie.
Even Helen Mirren on a bad day is better than nine out of ten American film queens polluting movie screens on any given Sunday, but really, this is one time she should have stayed in bed.
Try though she might, Mirren can't save the hackneyed and singularly unerotic story...
It starts flat and gets so tired.
Gives you only a superficial, clichéd picture of brothel life.
Overall, a complete misfire given the talent involved.
The picture feels edited with a chainsaw, reducing Hackford's story of desire to crummy Lifetime Movie theatrics, wasting the numerous gifts of Helen Mirren along the way.
A misbegotten jumble that clumsily synthesizes various incongruous elements.
Presumably the aim was to meld dark humor with passionate ardor and high drama, but the tone here is lumpy, crass and overheated.
It's the story of a marriage but not the one on screen. Taylor Hackford tarnishes wife Helen Mirren's illustrious streak but gets a paycheck. Horrible TV script.
If Hackford & Co. really and truly wanted to evoke the Sleazy Seventies, they should have studied Pam Grier's filmography like a religious text.
Hackford's films have been uneven, but he's generally an intelligent and tasteful director. His last film, Ray, may have been his best. Unfortunately, Love Ranch is almost certainly his worst.
A worthwhile tale might lurk somewhere in Taylor Hackford's latest, but this flaccid look at the early days of Reno's legalized bordello business takes a fictionalized approach to history...
Familiar to the point of blandness. But then again, every time The Mirren walks into view ...
It's all melodrama and yelling. The material is way beneath the actors... at least you get to see Pesci do "angry Joe" again.
Love Ranch proves to be a provocative, highly entertaining and surprisingly touching peek into a unique world movies don't often explore.
A hackneyed drama in which even Helen Mirren can't make much out of her bewildered character.
Screenwriter Mark Jacobson has done little to make this love triangle clearer than mud. The script is one trite cliche after another, and Pesci is little more than a caricature of himself in past roles.
Audience Reviews for Love Ranch
Super Reviewer
I mostly place blame on the script. The story is fine, but the film is in dire need of a rewrite. The film decides to not really give a narrative that tells the history of the place, and instead focuses on a few of the characters (in depth) in the context of the ranch. It would be a better film had it been a more balanced account that provides a history of the ranch, as well as great insights into the people who worked there- kinda like Casino or Boogie Nights. In fact, for many reasons I don't even need to explain, this made me think about Casino a lot, and I kinda wished I was watching that instead.
Even with the characters who get focused on a lot, they still seems a little thin, and could have been developed a lot mroe and better. There's almost an hour of deleted scenes on the DVD, and while watchjing those, I saw plenty of stuff that could have been kept in the film (with some other stuff taken out). It made me realize that they didn't really have the film planned out fully. EIther that, or they should have just lobbied to go all and make an epic instead of having to pick and choose (and do so sloppily).
This film isn't terrible though, even if I am ripping into it. The cast is good, and it is nice to see Joe Pesci come out of retirement. Too bad he, Mirren, Sergio Peris-Mencheta (a guy who does a really great job) and all the others couldn't save it. I'm just disappointed that the film is just all over the place and doesn't do what it could have given the subject matter and particular story. Hackford an okay director, but I don't know what the hell went wrong here, or what he and the rest were thinking. I wasn't bored by this film, but all the crap that's wrong with it makes me feel like I should just split it down the middle and give it an even "Gentleman's C".
Super Reviewer
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- Grace: Amid all the lies, I knew the truth. That we had it, for a moment, love and truth together. How many people can say that?
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