This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

If you want to watch this movie after reading Lovelace, you will be disappointed. It has nothing to do with the book.

Amanda Seyfried is a dear, sweet and very natural actress, a real talent. I liked her very much in "Les Misérables," "Gone," "Chloe", "Mamma Mia!". She can really act and deserves better and better roles. Peter Sarsgaard is good in the role of villain Chuck Traynor. Sharon Stone, becomes better and better by aging, you know, the old hen makes the good soup. There are some names out there in the cast, they are OK. Eric Roberts, as usual lately, he's just signing the book, make note of his presence, just to be paid. And, because I'm sure there are enough idiots in the world (especially in the US) who even think that some women have their clitoris in the throat, well no, they don't have it there, they have it elsewhere... Enjoy the film!

'Lovelace' is the first of two films this year based on the porn phenomenon Linda Lovelace, who rose to superstardom in the early '70s with the film 'Deep Throat'.This bio-pic might've been a disaster, but directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman have made an engaging and entertaining look at the former Linda Boreman's life, even if her situations are difficult to watch at times. The acting is spot-on, and the movie has a killer retro soundtrack.You've probably heard the story of 'Deep Throat', one of the first porno films to include a plot, characters and a decently-sized budget. Shot for around $50,000, the movie has made hundreds of millions in profit over the years.We first meet Linda (Amanda Seyfried) as a 19-year-old girl living with her parents (Robert Patrick and an unrecognizable Sharon Stone) in Florida, where she and her friend are hired as Go-Go dancers at the local skating rink. A man by the name of Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard) takes a liking to her, and the two eventually run off to get married. After Chuck realizes Linda's talent, he brings her to porn producer Butchie Periano (Bobby Cannavale) and director Gerard Damiano (Hank Azaria). As we already know from history, the movie they made together became a huge success.However, as we see in a time-jump several years forward, Linda later wrote a book called 'Ordeal' that chronicled her life with Traynor, who she claimed beat and tortured her, and forced her into slavery and gang rapes for money. He also handled all her financial affairs and never let her see a dime from the movie. It's a sad and depressing story, but not without a light of hope as Linda escapes Traynor and becomes an activist for women's rights who spoke out against pornography until her untimely death by car crash in 2002.The film is similar in structure to 'Boogie Nights'. The first section is fun with lots of '70s music, dancing and parties. Then, the second half is a dark downward spiral as these successful people hit rock bottom, and Linda is forced to perform wretched acts on strangers by her abusive husband.Seyfried brings Linda Lovelace to life. She's elegant, attractive and damn fun to watch. The actress captures the emotional depth of this sad tale. Sarsgaard pulls off one of the slimiest characters ever put to film. Not once do you like this guy. Sharon Stone is the wild card here; she's physically unrecognizable, but gives one hell of a supporting performance. Cannavale and Azaria turn in hilarious supporting roles, and the movie also has cameos by James Franco (as a young Hugh Hefner), Wes Bentley, Eric Roberts, Adam Brody and Juno Temple.

When reviewing a biopic, one always has to choose how much weight to put on the faithfulness of the story. Sometimes this is rather hard to do, whether it's because the real circumstances are not clear or that they wouldn't make for a good movie. Lovelace as a movie suffers from the former. There has been a lot of talk about Linda Lovelace, born Linda Boreman, from multiple sources, and people still argue how much forcing went into getting her into porn business. This film tries to straddle the fence by showing both sides of the argument. Whether this was a valid choice is a matter of taste.Let's talk about the positives first. The acting is really strong. Amanda Seyfried shines in her role, capable of innocent vulnerability and determined strength in equal measures, as needed. Peter Sarsgaard, playing Linda's abusive husband Chuck, is also suitably egoistically terrifying when enraged and all sweet words, charisma and honey when not. Special mention should also go to Sharon Stone, playing Linda's emotionally cold mother. The scene where Linda begs her for an asylum, only to be told to go back to her husband, is chilling to watch.The film also reaches the feel of the era rather well through clothing, hairstyles and makeup. Unfortunately the way the story is told is rather suboptimal. We get shown the same scenes from multiple perspectives, but the way this storytelling trick is utilized seems haphazard and more of an afterthought than anything else. It allows for some interesting commentary and it makes the story more interesting when we first see the more innocent version only to be given the so called full story later. And yet I feel that they should have gone with the grittier tone from the get go. Now the more innocent beginning feels like sugarcoating in order to hide the ugliness of the real story. Like the film makers are shying away from their story material.Ultimately it's hard to recommend Lovelace to anyone. It doesn't seem to be faithful enough to satisfy those that care about the actual story, its plot isn't strong enough to elevate it above its peers and as a whole it doesn't leave that much of an impact. See it if its source material interests you and/or if you're looking for some good acting performances.