How sad is this?

Don't listen to the negative reviews

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This film about a famous British pornographer has to be compared with the late Milos Forman's masterpiece "The People vs. Larry Flynt" and it loses in every way. Throughout watching it, I kept thinking: why do the filmmakers want us to be interested about Paul Raymond and the other drug-addicted lowlifes? The film provides no answer, Mr. Raymond is left a shallow character who seems to have no opinion about anything except his business empire.The drug aspect is vastly over-emphasized. Every second scene has someone snorting cocaine, among other substances. It was a big dramatical mistake to reveal in the beginning that PR's daughter will die in a self-inflicted way, after which we have to wait a hour and a half for her totally predictable demise. I almost fell asleep after the first hour.The only thing well done is period look. After gloriously black-and white 1950s, the 1960s and 1970s scenes look like actual Sixties and Seventies color films. My respect to the photographer, but none to the scriptwriters or the editor - the pace manages to be at the same time hurried and very boring.

After collaborating on 24 Hour Party People (2002) and A Cock and Bull Story (2005), two equally unconventional and uncompromising approaches to the biopic and novel adaptation respectively, prolific writer/director Michael Winterbottom and star Steve Coogan coupled up once again to tell the story of Paul Raymond, the property and smut tycoon once honoured with the title of richest man in the UK. While hit-and-miss in the comedy department and narratively all over the place, the double-act's first two collaborations were certainly all the more interesting for it, tossing formulas out of the window as they tried to grasp the nature and energy of their subjects, 'Madchester' music producer Tony Wilson and Laurence Sterne's famously unfilmable novel The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman.Perhaps the most disappoint thing about The Look of Love is just how formulaic it is, despite trying to convince us otherwise by peppering the narrative with clearly ad-libbed vignettes involving a small score of British comedians. Beginning in the 1950's, and in black-and- white, when Raymond was working as a sea-side impresario, the picture then does a good job capturing the glitz and glamour of the 1960's, as Raymond's interests evolve from owning every property he can lay his hands on to offering titillating entertainment the stuffy yet curious masses. He puts on an awful theatrical production that claims to be a romp with added boobies, which is panned critically but does little but stir up more interest. After the energetic, entertaining rise, the film plummets into a non-stop barrage of cocaine, orgies and excess for its second act.Raymond's wife Jean (Anna Friel) seems happy with her comfortable life of luxury and even lets her husband have sex with other women, but she is soon abandoned after the beautiful starlet of his new show, Fiona (Tamsin Egerton), catches his eye. By the 1970s, his 'tasteful' shows have given way to pornographic (but hugely popular) magazine Men Only, with Fiona as one of its most popular attractions, and his hedonistic lifestyle spirals further and further out of control. While his riches grow, he increasingly isolates the people around him. Except that is, for his daughter Debbie (the lovely Imogen Poots), an entitled yet troubled girl who shares her father's fondness for excess, and who seems to be the only person Raymond actually cares about.Just what attracted Winterbottom and Coogan to Paul Raymond is a mystery. Making a movie about such an unappealing arsehole can certainly be interesting done the right way, but The Love of Love doesn't seem keen on saying anything profound about the man, the business he was in, or the society he operated in. Coogan hardly stretches himself either, playing Raymond as Alan Partridge playing Raymond, randomly throwing in a Marlon Brando impression and pretentiously quoting artists more intelligent than him. After a lively first half, events quickly descend into scene after scene of naked flesh and terrible wigs; all style and very little substance at all. It pains me to say it, as Winterbottom is one of the best British directors around who never seems content with playing in one genre, and even his lesser works always have talking points. But The Look of Love is empty and long, albeit bolstered by an impressive Poots and a wonderfully smarmy Chris Addison in a smaller role.

this is a movie filled up with event and facts but no characters, no detail on characters' world, they are acting on the surface, the script is the problem, it should be worked into textures and layers of these colourful characters rather than just covered them with events and what's happen, they could edit some scenes out which director just show what's happen but not take them further to a better storytelling; stories happened to build the characters so we viewers can sympathize with them. You don't feel for any of the characters here. it's such a shame. this movie has no angle to this special group of people.....All the emotion is not quite there, never gets to the point and ends at the surfaces. the film wasted these casting since they can do more than what's in the film. We all know how well they can act for such a colourful Raymond's world.

I knew nothing about Paul Raymond and this film before a few hours ago. I decided to watch it because the title reminded me of ABC's The Look of Love song which played at the credits of Hamlet 2 which, funny enough, starred Steve Coogan (the song is a favorite of mine).You might be wondering why I'm rating this a 10 and it's because I read Felix Dennis's "How to Get Rich," which is his honest telling/recollection of his own story about becoming filthy, filthy rich and living the kind of lifestyle that he did (Dennis is the founder of Maxim Magazine) and this movie captures a certain essence in which I felt was present in Dennis's book (coincidentally, Paul Raymond was the founder of "Men Only" which I had no idea about prior to watching this film). Although this is just a movie, it's an interpretation, and I understand there are a lot of parts untold and whatnot, but because it shared certain strong similarities to Dennis's story, I can't help but use it as a powerfully insightful reflection of what it can be like to be in the shoes of someone like Paul Raymond or Felix Dennis, as well as those who are close to them, to compare/contrast who I am, and what I really want to experience in my own life. I'm the kind of person who always takes away from a movie a positive effect, but this one in particular really resonated with me, probably because I read Dennis's book several months ago and immediately recognized the connection, but it was also very, very entertaining and there was plenty of heart that went into making this film -- I was engrossed from beginning to end.