Review: The People vs. Larry Flynt

Woody Harrelson plays Larry Flynt, founder and publisher of Hustler magazine, the racier, cruder counterpart to Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine. The film charts the various legal issues tackled head-on by the volatile, stubborn pornographer who fights for freedom of (offensive) speech. Flynt and his magazine become massive targets for Conservative bigwigs like Charles Keating (a wonderfully humourless James Cromwell) and Rev. Jerry Falwell (a dead-on Richard Paul). Courtney Love plays Flynt’s fiery, drug-addicted wife Althea, Edward Norton is Flynt’s long-suffering but loyal lawyer Alan Isaacman, with Woody’s real-life brother Brett Harrelson playing his on-screen brother here. Jan Triska plays an assassin.

 

Perhaps not quite as impressive now as it seemed back in 1996, this Milos Forman (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, “Ragtime”) biopic of the infamous pornographer Larry Flynt is still a pretty enjoyable experience. Much as I’m against censorship and I believe in Larry’s fight here, I’m not sure the film is 100% honest in its argument. Overall, it’s a solid film but nothing more than that. It’s a pretty standard biopic about a very non-standard human being, written by two screenwriters who previously gave us a much more interesting and unusual biopic in “Ed Wood”.

 

Woody Harrelson doesn’t look much like the real latter-day Flynt (Stacy Keach would be closer), who appears as a judge to make things even harder for Harrelson there. However, he is a good fit for Flynt in his younger days and ultimately persuasive in every other way. He gives a genuinely good performance overall. His natural speaking voice actually lends itself well to having to mimic Flynt’s own voice pre-and-post the assassination attempt. Singer Courtney Love had been in films before (including “Sid and Nancy”) but here she was basically the female lead in a big Hollywood drama. Playing Larry’s trashy, hellcat junkie wife, she has zero problems convincing you of that. Hell, I think she’s a better actress than singer. I will say though, that she’s laughably cast in the early section where her character is supposedly under the age of legality. Love was 33 at the time and looks every bit of it. However, like Harrelson, in every other aspect she’s right for the part. Edward Norton is solid in an undemanding role, and there’s a funny performance by a cock-eyed Crispin Glover (as one of Flynt’s ‘gang’ of-sorts) who may not even entirely be acting. The two best performances come from a pitch-perfectly cast James Cromwell as Conservative killjoy Charles Keating, and rather surprisingly James Carville as his cohort. Yes, Democratic strategist James Carville – with hair – has an acting gig here playing a Conservative, Southern prosecutor. And he’s damn convincing!

 

I don’t care about Hustler magazine one way or the other, but I’ve never been a fan of censorship as I said earlier. I think it’s insane that someone can be sentenced to 20 years for mere pornography. Even if it was illegal at the time, 20 years is ridiculous. So I do have some sympathy for Flynt here. That said I think the film posits a rather disingenuous argument against Playboy magazine here. Flynt was a smut peddler and that’s just fine with me. I’m not gonna act like I’ve never viewed pornography or that I’m anti-porn. Like it or not, I think there’s a place in the world for it. However, to suggest that Playboy is boring because it’s not wall-to-wall graphic pornography doesn’t seem like something Flynt – or any intelligent person – would surely argue. That’s how Hugh Hefner got away with Playboy in the first place, geniuses – by interspersing the big titties with non-pornographic material. Hefner could get away with the pornography by presenting it as something a little more high-brow. So you don’t need to pretend that Playboy and Hustler were opposites in aim. Playboy led to Hustler in the first damn place. The latter wouldn’t exist without the former coming about. It’s silly to present Playboy as merely another of Flynt’s mortal enemies, basically. Scripted by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (who collaborated on “1408” and Tim Burton’s “Big Eyes”), the film would’ve done better to be a bit more honest and fair-minded. So that pissed me off a bit.

 

A solid, persuasive biopic that was perhaps a touch overrated at the time, even by me. Well-acted and enjoyable, but no more than that. 

 

Rating: B-