Critic Reviews

• Cath Clarke, Time Out

  There's something a bit over-familiar here - in a solidly entertaining, made-for-telly, nothing-we-haven't-seen-before, way.

• David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

  Steve Coogan's performance is consistently amusing, but the poignant dimensions the director appears to be seeking don't quite come together.

• Dennis Harvey, Variety

  Though all the performances are very good, much of Look's entertainment value comes from an impressive tech package that captures the shifting fashions of swinger-favored pop-culture garishness over the pic's roughly 25-year period.

• Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall

  This fascinating story is told with vivid style, a terrific use of actual settings and a strong cast.

• Jason Best, Movie Talk

  The film tells this story with gaudy brio, but the tone is wildly uneven, veering between Swinging 60s romp, nudge-wink satire and cautionary fable, as if Winterbottom and Greenhalgh couldn't decide what film they were making or who Raymond really was.

• Ed Whitfield, The Ooh Tray

  The unedifying spectacle is cut with sadness.

• Philip French, Observer [UK]

  A disappointingly crude and shallow biography ...

• Donald Clarke, Irish Times

  This version of the baron isn't even allowed to become anything so interesting as an enigma. It's Steve Coogan - only less so.

• MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher

  It's more than a disappointment -- it's a puzzlement. How did Michael Winterbottom, who's made so many intriguing movies that veer well away from the cautious, make a film so tediously conservative...?

• Rich Cline, Contactmusic.com

  Michael Winterbottom vividly recreates swinging 1960s London in this biopic about one of Soho's most notorious figures. It's a lively and attention-grabbing film, but the cast and filmmakers never create a character we can identify with or care about.

• Graham Young, Birmingham Mail

  The net result might be an over-stretched story lacking in drama and tension, but it's also a good period study with a fine central performance from the maturing Coogan.

• Christopher Tookey, Daily Mail [UK]

  Director Michael Winterbottom has achieved the impossible: he has made a biopic of Paul Raymond, Britain's most colourful porn baron, that's unobservant, unerotic and dull.

• Shaun Munro, What Culture

  Steve Coogan delivers a knock-out performance that renders the central figure in all of his complexity - at once admirable, deplorable and pitiable.

• Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]

  This is a shallow but watchable movie, and it nicely conveys the world of semi-respectable Soho porn, sadder and tattier than its sleazier end, with its desperate champagne lunches and dreary afternoon hangovers.

• Stephen Carty, Flix Capacitor

  Raymond's tragic, 'tache-sporting rise-and-fall story is mildly fascinating at times, but as a comedic drama it isn't especially funny or dramatic.

• Antonia Quirke, Financial Times

  It's all basically a way of getting some exceptionally nice knockers onto the screen.

• Henry Fitzherbert, Daily Express

  If Raymond remains elusive his daughter Debbie blazes with an intensity that elevates the picture into much more dramatic and disturbing territory.

• Paul Fairclough, Little White Lies

  Raymond would probably have approved - which might not be such a good thing.

• Matthew Turner, ViewLondon

  Paints a profoundly sad portrait of a fascinating Soho figure.

• Damon Smith, Birmingham Post

  Quips aside, there's a disappointing lack of depth to the characters.

Read all 22 critic reviews