StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Helloturia I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Benas Mcloughlin Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

robinski34 As with almost all biopics, half the battle with LoL is having an interest (passing or otherwise) in the life and times of the subject, in this case Soho porn purveyor Paul Raymond. To be fair however, there are enough interesting performances to haul the less committed viewer through to the end. The turns by Imogen Poots as Raymond's daughter Debbie and Chris Addison as Men Only boss Tony Power stand out, and it is never difficult to watch Anna Friel, here playing Raymond's wife Jean. Coogan himself is at the centre of everything, however the story almost seems to take place around him, with many events happening to Raymond rather than being driven by him. There are plenty of British thesps to spot, with David Walliams being prominent among them, and the production design deserves high billing for the glorious memories of time and place that it evokes. An amusing diversion, but there are difficult moments, and it's not all fluff and smut, the 18 certificate is deserved for various reasons. In the end, the film is unlikely to live long in the memory.

grantss OK, but not profound or overly interesting. Directed by Michael Winterbottom (director of 9 Songs, among others), with the subject being a owner of nude bars and men's magazines, you'd think this would be quite gritty. Sure, there's heaps of nudity but it all just seems pretty conventional. It's like a step-by-step history lesson, with the history being not that exciting or controversial.I was thinking this may be like a UK version of The People vs Larry Flynt, but the movie goes nowhere near freedom of expression/speech issues. There is no great moral, societal or political statement in this movie.The ending was quite emotional though, and that maybe showed more of what the movie was about. But for the ending, there would have been no point to the movie. The ending shifts the movie from the "don't like" to the "marginally do like" category.Great performance by Steve Coogan in the lead role. He uses all his comedic talents to deliver some great lines of dialogue, not all of which are meant to be funny, but which do give his character a warmth and relatability. Decent supporting cast too.

stephen-lambe There's an excellent story in here somewhere, and this movie does its best to tell a 40 year story in little more than an hour and a half, and while it's an enjoyable ride, it's all too sketchy to be really satisfying. The tone and performances are great. Coogan is very good and his improvisatory talents bring out similar qualities in many of the rest of the cast. Presumably a talent for improve is why actors like Chris Addison and James Lance were chosen, but even Tamsin Egerton has a good bash at it. The tone is odd in places - it's a drama with jokes but the cast has been plucked out of British stand up and television comedy, so we feel that we should be laughing more. Another reviewer made the comment that he couldn't understand why the cinema audience laughed in the cocaine / childbirth scene, as it is so serious. The point is that it is both tragic and hilarious - a scene and film CAN be both. Check out the deleted scenes on the DVD for some of the funnier but less appropriate scenes. Oh, and Chris Addison's beard is dreadful. Overall, though, it doesn't really hold together as a drama. None of the characters are fleshed out enough for us to care about them enough, but it's a great ride nonetheless.

Likes_Ninjas90 Michael Winterbottom's The Look of Love is a comedy-drama that never needed to be funny. The film is above all else a tragedy about how a man's wealth and his real estate empire clouded his judgment in all of his relationships. He earned his wealth through establishing his Revue Bars in Soho, the West End of London during the late 1950s. These bars featured nude female models, who were allowed to move on stage, which was deemed illegal at the time.Raymond then established his Men's Only magazine, which was a pornographic publication. His rise in wealth and property through the 60s and 70s led for him to be titled by the mid-90s as "The King of Soho". Paul Raymond was declared in 1992 to be one of the richest men in Britain. He died in 2008 with a fortune that was said to be worth over six-hundred million dollars. This is the fourth film Winterbottom has made with Steve Coogan, after Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, The Trip and 24 Hour Party People. Coogan specialises in playing shallow, self-absorbed, stuffy characters. His performance as Raymond is familiar but extremely engaging and darkly funny. Accompanied by some hilariously silly innuendo-laden dialogue, he uses his voice to express the pompousness and artificialness of Raymond's self-made identity. He values his wealth and celebrity image over sustained relationships. One of the stories he repeats is that his apartment was designed by Ringo Starr. A tracking shot as he walks through the room shows the sustained but untouched and unfulfilled construct of his lifestyle. In the context of censorship laws, the incredibly frank and confronting stage shows have a historical resonance, which is further complimented by their utter ridiculousness. Some of Raymond's stage ideas, like combing Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun on stage with nude female models, are strange and hilarious. Yet Paul Raymond is also in many ways a terrible man. His wife Jean (Anna Friel) willingly lets him cheat on her and he relates to his daughter Debbie (Imogen Poots), not through ordinary parental wisdom, but the advice of a business partner. When she eats all of the cakes he buys for her, he tells her that they're not all for her but for the other girls so that she'll have friends. Similarly, when she cries about being cut from one his shows as a singer he doesn't reassure her about future but argues that he can't let the show keep bleeding money. What the screenplay from first time writer Matt Greenhalgh lacks is a deeper understanding of both the reactions and the immobility of the characters. The film is about Raymond's relationships with three different women and despite all of the ones that he sleeps with, works with and exploits, he understands none of them. Rather unintentionally, the film is like this too.The female characters contradict themselves in confusing ways. His first wife knows about his affairs but is still surprised and upset when he finally leaves her. His mistress Fiona (Tamsin Egerton) is no fool either. She writes for his magazine and models in his shows. She engages with him and other women in acts of threesomes but leaves him when he can't offer a normal life. The film is extremely alert to Raymond letting his own daughter fatally self-destruct through her cocaine addiction (he advises her to buy the good stuff) but at the end the film still makes an attempt to reach for our undeserving sympathy. The image of the supposedly talentless daughter singing beautifully over the end credits is also a confusing one. If the film was not told through such a rigid, episodic structure, treating the lives of characters like small vignettes (cancer, marriage and addiction), there would have been stronger ongoing threads of conflict and more time invested into understanding these characters. Some of them are truly sadder than funny.