Andy Bellin

Lovelace

First Hit:  Surprisingly engaging film although it lacked a certain depth.

Deep Throat grossed some $600+ million dollars. Linda Lovelace (Amanda Seyfried) made less than $2,000 for her part and she was a porn star actress for less than 3 weeks of her life. 

Being used by her husband Chuck (Peter Sarsgaard) and other men was the basis for her book “Ordeal”.

The film develops Linda from a young teen, who didn’t like being controlled by her strict parents. As we learn, their restrictiveness came from Linda and family having to move because she became pregnant and gave the baby up for adoption which was a family embarrassment (back in those days that wasn’t uncommon).

Linda gets mesmerized by Chuck at a roller rink where she was dancing as a go-go dancer for a local band. As she experiences the freedom of being away from her parents she also discovers the controlling restrictiveness of being married to a controlling man. Chuck needs money so he convinces Linda, with her ability to not have a gag reflex, to do a porno film – and Deep Throat was born.

As her fame increased her husband got more restrictive and abusive. Except Linda, this film doesn’t dig into any of the characters too deep and even then Linda’s own personality isn’t explored too much.

Seyfried is engaging and pulls off, the innocence, lack of self-worth, and slow at finding her own voice character she needed to be. Sarsgaard is good as the menacing Chuck, although it would have helped having some background on his character. Sharon Stone as Linda’s mother was excellent and one of the better aspects of this film. Robert Patrick as Linda’s father was also very strong by coming across as smoldering, shamed, and withdrawn. I didn’t think James Franco as Hugh Hefner worked as there wasn’t the air that Hef created around him with this character. Andy Bellin wrote this script which felt like it needed to dig into the characters more. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman co-directed this film and for the most part it was OK but lacked a solid idea.

Overall:  Not really worth seeing in the theater but maybe at home.

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