Release Date: December 25, 1996
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love, Edward Norton, Brett Harrelson, Donna Hanover, James Cromwell, Crispin Glover, Richard Paul
Directed by: Milos Forman
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment
MPAA Rating: R (strong sexual material, nudity, language, drug use)
Most movies that have a message are no fun. It's an accepted psychological fact of moviemaking that no audience likes to be preached to, let alone preached to in a manner that points out their shortcomings or ignorance. The problems with preaching don't stop there. With the admirable intent of getting the point across, the director may often sacrifice meaningful drama, suspense, humor, or action (depending on the genre). Watching a well-produced movie with no message whatsoever is far preferred than watching a badly produced movie with a strong message. Milos Forman's latest film, The People vs. Larry Flynt, manages to inspire the audience by providing real-world application (liberal as it may be) to the rights guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution without sacrificing a good drama.
Unfortunately, the movie's not very fun to watch. Drama or not, and inspiring message or not, the movie carries, as the tag line suggests, a lot of disagreeable points. Harrelson, who plays the title character of Larry Flynt, is a self-made man, right from his childhood days selling moonshine to farmers. The present, for the movie, is the 1970s and '80s, during which time Flynt goes from being the proprietor of a two-bit soft-core strip club to the millonaire owner of the smut magazine Hustler. However, the availability of Hustler in drugstores and newsstands bothers the so-called honest citizens, and Flynt is brought before several judges on various crimes. Beset by paralysis from several gunshot wounds, and doped up on painkillers, he becomes increasingly intolerable and eventually lands himself before the Supreme Court on case against Jerry Falwell. Falwell's accusations, which request compensation for outrageous claims Flynt made in his magazine, eventually serve as the spark for a battle of First Amendment rights.
Harrelson is completely contemptable as the two-bit porn publisher Flynt, and his character is never likeable by the audience. He gives quite a dynamic performance, and his realism (probably more so than his likeability) is crucial to the plot. The audience has to believe that an entire nation would turn its ear to the Larry Flynt case, and more so the case he makes with his First Amendment rights. And although seemingly impossible, his wife Althea (played by Kurt Cobain widow Courtney Love) is even more hateworthy: originally a promiscuous, slutty dancer and later a drug-abusing, suicidal anti-social, she has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. About the only likeable character in the bunch is the criminally underused Alan Isaacman (Edward Norton), Flynt's overburdened attorney. Flamboyant and brilliant, he is the antithesis of Flynt: he doesn't like what Flynt's doing, but he believes in Larry's cause. As Flynt himself says: "Come on, I'm your dream client: I'm the most fun, I'm rich, and I'm always in trouble!"
Milos Forman, who's helmed two Academy Award-winning pictures (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus), certainly knows what he's doing behind the camera. The script that he's given to work with, though, is a conglomeration of some of the most societally contemptable characters and character traits known to man. A lot of the nudity and substance abuse is gratuitous, to the point where the movie borders on over-establishing Flynt's motive. Soon the viewer begins to suspect that the movie is nothing more than anti-Larry Flynt propaganda. This movie would be hard to recommend, as well as hard to watch for most anyone except an extreme left-wing liberal. Then again, perhaps Forman's movie lives by its own tag line: "You may not like what he does, but are you prepared to give up his right to do it?"
all contents © 1996 Craig Roush