Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I expected something more provocative and daring from Milos Forman, after all he has won two Oscars for best director. Instead I get a rather boring film which masquerades as an impassioned fight for free speech.Larry Flynt is a sleazy, provocative and abrasive personality. In the movie we see Larry (Woody Harrelson) and his brother run a strip club in Cincinnati where he is known for sleeping with the strippers. There he ends up with a long term relationship Althea (Courtney Love) on the verge of just being old enough to be the new sripper and the woman Larry later marries.Like most men, Larry notices that people did not buy Playboy to read the articles. They wanted to see pictures of naked women and he published Hustler, which offered women in more explicit poses. Larry even managed to obtain nude shots of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis which sent sales through the roof. However Larry's success in porn also attracts the attention of anti porn campaigners and the ire of the religious right who took him to court.Alan Isaacman (Edward Norton) is the frustrated young lawyer who takes on Larry as a client and has to put up with his erratic behaviour as they fight for first amendment rights. Both take a bullet for their troubles leaving Larry paralysed.Now I am not going to get prudish here. Larry Flynt is a pornographer, he had sex with his strippers, he exploited women, took advantage of the unequal relationship he had with women under is control whether it be in a strip club or a photo studio. Larry is no champion of free speech, it just helps him get where he wants to go just as befriending President's Carter sister was convenient for him. Frankly Ruth Carter is the only interesting character in this movie.You know this film has been sanitized to please Larry as he appears in the film as a judge. Woody Harrelson plays Larry as an erratic quirky clown, a sexed up one who might also be a manic depressive. I can certainly understand the psychological trauma he felt after being paralysed.Both Harrelson and Norton give good performances, Courtney Love was ok but she looked too old for someone who was technically a minor when she first met Larry. You can tell how bankrupt this film is. It wants to be provocative and titillate its audience, yet when Love poses for the nude shots, she is covered up by objects or conveniently clothed in lingerie.

Not worth my time, Flynt was a pig, period. He wasn't fighting for your free speech you losers, he was fighting because in porn, there is a lot of money, for men like him. He makes whores out of people, then he gets most of the money, they usually contract a disease. Read the history,wake up, liberalism is a lie. This movie should sit well with filthy liberals, but decent people will avoid it. -20 stars.

"All I'm guilty of is bad taste," Larry Flynt (Woody Harrelson) shrugs. He has recently founded pornographic magazine Hustler, and after just a few months of success, he finds himself in the middle of a court case – the religious zealots, helicopter parents, and anti-pornography activists of the world are his enemies. They find Flynt's magazine to be even trashier than Playboy. It's understandable: who wants a beloved figure like Santa Claus to be in the center of a severely lewd cartoon?Hugh Hefner's ideals seem saintly in comparison to the more adventurous Flynt. Hefner can get past the censors by squeezing in "articles" in- between the nudes, the nudes themselves being somewhat playful rather than severely hardcore. Flynt, on the other hand, is much less conscientious. He wants high quality pictures, ones that are no-holds barred and as explicit as possible. He doesn't have time for articles nor does he much care about the sensitivity of the public. He wants to give the perverts of the nation what they want.Now in his 70s, Flynt has been sued an obscene amount of times, whether it be regarding the magazine itself, the individuals he lampoons within its pages, or the people he offends. You can tell that The People vs. Larry Flynt is a great movie because, for two hours, we actually see Flynt as a sort of anti-hero, an advocate for free-speech and a man unafraid to push boundaries (even if the boundary line is so far away it looks like a dot). The film spans decades, covering his poverty coated childhood, his early days as a strip-club owner, his bombastic marriage to the unstable Althea Leasure (Courtney Love), the assassination attempt that paralyzed him from the waist down, and his court case filled '80s. He begins as a surprisingly smart businessman but declines after he is nearly killed. The People vs. Larry Flynt is an ingenious comedy for the first hour or so, treating Flynt's down-and-dirty business with a tongue-in-cheek manner that fits like a glove. In his early years, he was eager to please, slightly naïve, and even charming. The transition from black comedy to wearisome drama would normally feel jarring, but Forman's direction is never purposefully funny or purposefully dark; he tells it like it is, and it just so happens that Flynt's life is just as full of laughs as it is of tragedies.The post-assassination life of Flynt is what hits the hardest, considering it follows such a bubbly, ballsy first half. Althea has adopted a severe drug habit and Flynt himself rides around in a gold wheelchair, his speech slurry and out-of-control. Hustler, if possible, has become even more tasteless, and Flynt's once impressive mansion is crumbling with the depressiveness of Norma Desmond's humble abode. As his life spirals out of control, we are reminded that one can hardly handle a great number of court cases, a near-killing, and pills and still be eager to please, slightly naïve, and even charming. But you can hardly be a pornographer and avoid the eventual grease that will consume your every move.Harrelson is like a chameleon, adopting every single one of Flynt's mannerisms and then some. As the film travels through time, the titular figure changes his characteristics at a constant rate, but Harrelson doesn't merely change the way he talks and call it a day. He exudes Flynt's transitions so naturally that it is as if he's captured the man himself. Love is equally as terrific, giving Althea an infectious charisma that makes her final years all the more affecting.The People vs. Larry Flynt may cover too many bases to be consistently enthralling, but rarely has a film made a controversial figure so likable, so compelling on the screen. Larry Flynt is a scumbag, as one character puts it, but never has a scumbag been so multi-faceted, so utterly eccentric. And, kind of brilliant. Read more reviews at petersonreviews.com

"The People Vs. Larry Flynt" is a film that might make you angry, or it may make you glad that we, as Americans, have the most cherished right any person could ask for: The freedom to voice an opinion or an idea, regardless of how unpopular or unappealing it may be. So it is with the true story of Larry Flynt, notorious publisher of the porn magazine "Hustler". It is essential to know that at no time does "People vs. Larry Flynt" try to depict it's title character as a saint, or a hero, or even someone you'd take to a family picnic. Flynt, by his own admission, acknowledges that he, and his magazine and it's content is the most provocative and blatant of it's kind in the field of pornographic material. But even more importantly is Flynt's assertion that if the First Amendment can protect someone like him, then it can protect each and every one of us who call ourselves Americans and our citizens' rights, for which countless men have fought and died to preserve. (Just for the record, I myself don't particularly care for pornographic material, but that's MY choice. I do not want nor will I abide any federal, state or local government invading MY life, telling me what I CAN or CANNOT partake of. If you want to talk about obscenity, I put it to you, dear reader, that the most obscene act a government can perform is to control the thoughts and words and ideas of it's own people. To do so is to hearken back to the days of Hitler, and other "thought police" who attempted to regulate free speech and independent thought. OK, rant over.) As to the film itself, the easiest way to describe it is that this is a top notch biographical story, filled with five star performances all around. Woody Harrelson, playing Flynt, does perhaps some of his greatest film work. Ed Norton, who plays Flynt's attorney, turns in yet another stellar job, and Courtney Love, who plays Flynt's wife, dazzles us by displaying, ironically enough, most of the same qualities that actually made her infamous in her own personal life. In the context of this film, however, those negatives of Love are exactly what was needed to recreate this character. The story, in a nutshell, southern Ohio club owner Larry Flynt gets the bright idea to base a magazine off of the type of entertainment he provides at his clubs. The magazine becomes a sensation, but also a perpetual target of moralistic crusaders who believe that material such as that produced by Flynt has no place anywhere in society; at least, in their eyes at any rate. And there is the conflict which drives this movie. Obscenity vs. Free Speech. Director Milos Forman gives us both sides of this argument throughout the film, but drives home the point that "American freedom" includes allowing others to voice opinions or present concepts that, while offensive and repulsive to some, are still just as worthy of protection as any other American's right to say what he or she feels. We follow Larry and his contemporaries through the rags to riches journey, and the ensuing attacks upon it by those who sternly disagree based on their own personal tastes. And "personal taste" is subjective, and therefore cannot be regulated to only one viewpoint. Late in the film, Flynt's case is brought before no less then the Supreme Court, stemming from an earlier court battle with evangelist Jerry Falwell. The ensuing decision from the High Court, which I'll leave for you to see for yourself, defines the very nature of the prospect of freedom of speech, and more importantly, the most rudimentary of basic civil rights as we know them in the United States. Whether you like or hate Larry Flynt, Hustler Magazine, or pornography of any kind is irrelevant. What one must accept if they wish to abide by our constitution, is the inalienable right of every man and woman to be free individuals in terms of their opinions, expressions and thoughts. To do otherwise is a slap in the face to every person who has ever fought for the American way."The People Vs. Larry Flynt" is a magnificent tale of not just one man's fight for the freedom of speech, but the entire thought process of how strongly we wish to continue to be a free country.Watch it, and be glad you're an American with rights.