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The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996)
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Reviews Counted:15
Fresh:13
Rotten:2
Average Rating:7.7/10
Runtime: 2 hrs 10 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: In THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT, Milos Forman expertly directs the viewer's sympathy toward Larry Flynt (Woody Harrelson in a superb performance): smut peddler, misogynist, and Editor in Chief of the... In THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT, Milos Forman expertly directs the viewer's sympathy toward Larry Flynt (Woody Harrelson in a superb performance): smut peddler, misogynist, and Editor in Chief of the infamous Hustler magazine. Born in the back woods of Appalachia, the young Flynt--in an opening scene that immediately grabs and amuses--is seen selling moonshine as a child to alcoholic hermits. Flash forward to the 1960s, and he's running a go-go club where he meets the wild (and strangely loveable) Althea Leasure (Courtney Love) who becomes his soul mate and wife. Life is not as sweet as it first seems for the porn king who finds a massive readership for his magazine (the first to show crotch shots). He soon finds himself in the middle of several Supreme Court law suits, and also as an assassin's target. While Flynt's various outrageous meetings with self-righteous Reverend Jerry Falwell (Richard Paul) and devout Christian Ruth Carter Stapleton (President Jimmy Carter's sister, played by Rudolph Giuliani's ex-wife Donna Hanover) are hilarious and smartly pointed, it is perhaps the touching, and ultimately tragic, love story between him and Althea that make him very human, and very interesting to watch. [More]
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love, Edward Norton, Miles Chapin
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love, Edward Norton, Miles Chapin, Vincent Schiavelli, Donna Hanover, Crispin Glover, James Cromwell, Richard Paul, Brett Harrelson, James Carville
Director: Milos Forman
Director: Milos Forman
Screenwriter: Larry Karaszewski, Scott Alexander
Producer: Oliver Stone, Janet Yang, Michael Hausman
Composer: Thomas Newman
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Reviews for The People Vs. Larry Flynt
A brave, spectacularly entertaining -- and unexpectedly stirring -- account of Flynt's life that asks us to regard the publisher of Hustler magazine as an invaluable champion of our First Amendment freedoms.
One of the truly bizarre careers in recent American cultural life provides the source of tart and tasty amusement in The People vs. Larry Flynt.
Woody Harrelson plays Flynt with energy, and Courtney Love does at least as well as his wife.
We're really celebrating Hollywood's freedom to create biographies of anyone, no matter how high or low on the social ladder, and still come up with the same banal characteristics, messages and conclusions.
It's a modern-day Capra film, about an unorthodox businessman who's persecuted for his originality but eventually is recognized for the lovable, rugged American individualist he truly is.
Thanks to the light humour, it's consistently engaging; yet minus that darker shading, it's never fully convincing.
In its excesses and extravagances, its fascination with sex, religion, celebrity, bad taste and making a whole lot of money, there is no more American story than that of combative pornographer and Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt.
The People vs. Larry Flynt is ultimately a worse disappointment than an out-and-out stinker would be, because of its lively, entertaining first half.
You don't have to like the man to support his struggles and enjoy this dramatization of them.
Like 12 Angry Men, it's a civics lesson that will still be regaling film enthusiasts four decades hence.
Love proves she is not a rock star pretending to act, but a true actress, and Harrelson matches her with his portrait of a man who has one thing on his mind, and never changes it.
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