The Look of Love (2013)
Average Rating: 5.7/10
Reviews Counted: 70
Fresh: 39 | Rotten: 31
While it may not add up to the definitive Paul Raymond biopic -- or take full advantage of Steve Coogan's many gifts -- The Look of Love still proves an entertainingly old-fashioned look at the Swinging London of the 1960s.
Average Rating: 5.6/10
Critic Reviews: 16
Fresh: 8 | Rotten: 8
While it may not add up to the definitive Paul Raymond biopic -- or take full advantage of Steve Coogan's many gifts -- The Look of Love still proves an entertainingly old-fashioned look at the Swinging London of the 1960s.
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Average Rating: 3.1/5
User Ratings: 2,278
Movie Info
The true tale of British adult magazine publisher and entrepreneur Paul Raymond (Steve Coogan of "24 Hour Party People", "The Trip"). A modern-day King Midas, Raymond became one of the richest men in Britain - at the cost of losing those closest to him. (c) IFC
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Cast
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Steve Coogan
Paul Raymond -
Anna Friel
Jean Raymond -
Imogen Poots
Debbie Raymond -
Tamsin Egerton
Fiona Richmond -
Stephen Fry
Barrister -
David Walliams
Vicar Edwyn Young -
Simon Bird (IV)
Jonathan Hodge -
Chris Addison
Tony Power -
James Lance
Carl Snitcher -
Matthew Beard
Howard Raymond -
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The Look of Love Trailer & Photos
All Critics (70) | Top Critics (16) | Fresh (39) | Rotten (31)
Frankly, the guy just isn't very interesting.
Top CriticGroovy period soundtrack aside, "The Look of Love" has almost nothing to say of any interest, importance or humor.
Double-billing comic and tragic tones, the biopic "The Look of Love" follows a father and a daughter over three decades in London's swinging Soho.
Director Michael Winterbottom and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh provide the essential outline of Raymond's story, but they're a little too preoccupied with its glitzy aspects.
A puzzlingly misconceived biopic: a tasteful, subdued movie about a man who was as tasteless and unsubdued as they come.
Coogan turns in a fine dramatic performance in a role that calls for as much actual acting as wisecracking.
The Look of Love comes off as an extremely standard biopic that seems to have emerged directly from a template for such films...
Steve Coogan's fourth collaboration with director Michael Winterbottom is a funny, visually inventive take on Britain's Hugh Hefner.
Coogan is adept at playing the cad, but Winterbottom gives him little else to do.
Coogan never comes close to disappearing into the character, leaving the whole movie teetering uneasily between campy naughtiness and empathetic character study.
It's a case of "fourth time unlucky" for frequent collaborators Michael Winterbottom and Steve Coogan. Well, "uninspired" might be more accurate.
It's structured around the question, "What went wrong?" but we can guess the answer about five minutes into the film.
U.K. man builds strip-club empire in tragic, mature biopic.
Maybe there was a time when just boobs and money were sufficient to entertain. Not anymore.
A character study that offers some of Steve Coogan's most interesting work and another testament to Michael Winterbottom's knack for period naturalism.
The Look of Love is the latest and -- I'm sorry to report -- the least of Coogan and Winterbottom's team-ups.
Not only is Coogan not pushing himself, he often seems barely engaged, playing Raymond as a man of less than life size.
Audience Reviews for The Look of Love
Super Reviewer
The biopic film is a difficult genre, one which rarely produces satisfying results. The best biopics choose to focus on a particular moment or aspect of their subject's life. Tim Burton's 'Ed Wood' is a perfect example of a film which focuses on celebrating its subject's best years. Had Burton taken the usual biopic route, as Winterbottom does here, the second half of his film would have been a depressing tale of Wood's downward spiral into drug addiction. There's a strange level of begrudgery involved in most biopics, aimed, as they so often are, to appeal at the primitive jealousy we feel towards the rich and famous. These films take great delight in building up a successful figure, only to knock them down in the final act. Why choose to focus on a famous person's human flaws rather than the achievements which brought them such fame?
Winterbottom's film adopts this crude tactic, all champagne popping montages in the first half, drug-addled paranoia and self-destruction in the second. We've seen this a million times before, with far more interesting subjects. Raymond's character is pretty unremarkable and Coogan does him no favors with his portrayal, indistinguishable from any other character the former comedian has played. The real star of the show is Poots, stealing every scene she appears in. By the end of 2013, this girl's name will be on everyone's lips. Friel is also impressive, perfectly capturing the new-money crassness of her character.
Winterbottom has become the U.K's Stephen Soderbergh, churning out films at an incredible rate. He began his career with a series of interesting works but, like his U.S counterpart, he seems to be coasting on auto-pilot now. Maybe a Soderbergh-esque break is in order?
Super Reviewer
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Foreign Titles
- The Look of Love (DE)
- The Look of Love (UK)
As racy a movie as it is, "The Look of Love" is really not about sex nor is it concerned with drugs. Rather, it makes a very well-developed case for moderation in all things, as exemplified by the scenes at the sweet shop. For example, swingers do not make the best of parents. But as stimulating as it can be to review a recent history of erotica, two key performances do not hold up under scrutiny and with them go the movie. No matter the different hairstyles, Steve Coogan is still Steve Coogan doing impressions in a restaurant. And even more importantly, while Imogen Poots has done fine work elsewhere, here she does not have the requisite impact to be fully successful as the emotional core of the movie and the only character who tragically fails at reinvention.