Review of Boogie Nights (1997) by Henry F — 08 May 2014

SPOILERS!

That was pretty damn disappointing. I've heard so much good stuff about this movie, and PTA is one of the best directors around in my opinion, but this film just really wasn't that good, not in comparison to his other films at least. Maybe it was the selfish characters, or the fact that a lot of them, who near the end of the film were at rock bottom, suddenly changed their lives around for no apparent reason, with no motive to do it what so ever. I mean it's not like it was shown that they all had some revelation, right? They just went from the bottom to the complete opposite in a matter of minutes! Unfortunately My friends, that's just called lazy writing. Plus, Diggler was just shown to go back to his life of porn, but isn't that kind of the thing that messed him up in the first place? Was it trying to say that he's an idiot that didn't learn anything from his experiences? I don't know, but either way it was disappointing.

Despite my rambling criticism, it wasn't all bad, I mean I have given it 3 stars. I really liked how it showed the changing attitudes to porn as time went on, the directing was fairly good, as was the acting, and despite all its flaws it was an entertaining film to watch with its multiple character backgrounds; although it seemed like some of them weren't quite finished...

Maybe I should let PTA off and use the excuse that he was a young director/writer at the time, but I think I preferred his first movie, Hard Eight, to this. It really baffles me that this movie is so highly praised, maybe I'm the idiot, maybe I just didn't get it, I hope that's the case.