Deep Throat Movie Review

Title: Deep Throat

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Synopsis: It was a $25,000 movie that became a $600 million phenomenon. It caused and administration to declare war on freedom. It turned buying a ticket into an act of revolution. Generally considered the most profitable motion picture of all time, the 1972 adult film Deep Throat was more than a titillating curiosity and a huge moneymaker. Released at the very moment when the nationâs movements for sexual liberation, equal rights and counter-cultural values were reaching a fever pitch, this sexually explicit film unexpectedly became the flashpoint for an unprecedented social and political firestorm--a major cultural phenomenon whose impact continues to affect us today.

Deep Throat Film Review

Deep Throat Score: 64

100	Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
	Nimble, engrossing, and journalistically eye-opening, a movie that pulls into focus 30 years of porn in America. It also pulls no punches.
88	USA Today by Mike Clark
	Inside Deep Throat, an NC-17 documentary that deftly chronicles the fallout -- with about 15 seconds of hard-core footage -- has some surprise credits.
80	Slate by David Edelstein
	Isn't as campy or as unhinged as the delightful Bailey and Barbato Tammy Faye Baker documentary, "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"; it's more like your standard HBO documentary (and HBO co-produced). But it's extremely entertaining.
80	Dallas Observer by Michael Fox
	The film falls short only in its refusal to take a stand on whether star Linda Lovelace was a victim, as she claimed.
80	New York Magazine by Ken Tucker
	Delightful, insightful documentary.
80	TV Guide by Maitland McDonagh
	Offbeat documentary filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato dissect the history and legend of perhaps the best known and most profitable pornographic movies ever made.
80	Empire by Nick De Semlyen
	There's nothing preachy about this slick and funny doc (narrated by Dennis Hopper), which as a brief history of how porn spurted into the mainstream has all the money shots you could ask for.
75	Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
	The doc is longer on historical interest than original insights or analysis.
75	Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
	The film goes beyond historical anecdotes. Besides fresh and funny insights from the likes of Norman Mailer and John Waters, it shows how little censorship politics have changed from Nixon to Bush.
75	Miami Herald by Rene Rodriguez
	Considering the seedy nature of the adult film industry and the sad fates of many of its stars, Inside Deep Throat is surprisingly light on tragedy.
75	Baltimore Sun by Chris Kaltenbach
	When Inside Deep Throat is over, it's tough to say which tragic moment lingers longer.
75	Portland Oregonian by Shawn Levy
	A deliriously entertaining field report from a historical moment when porn darned near became mainstream.
75	San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
	Does a fine job.
75	Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea
	Offers a diverting tale of erstwhile indie filmmaking and the power of porn to generate change - both at the box office and in the bedroom.
75	New York Post by Lou Lumenick
	A thorough but highly entertaining documentary details the making of the notorious 1972 film, the series of legal battles that helped make it immensely popular and the flick's considerable cultural legacy.
75	Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
	Inside Deep Throat, a documentary that premiered at Sundance and is now going into national release, was made not on the fringes but by the very establishment itself.
70	Washington Post by Ann Hornaday
	An often lively investigation of the social forces that produced the original movie and made it an unlikely political shibboleth in the ongoing culture wars.
70	The Onion (A.V. Club) by Scott Tobias
	Inside Deep Throat starts small and keeps expanding outward until there's seemingly no facet of American life the phenomenon hasn't touched.
70	The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt
	Provocative and perceptive.
70	Variety by Todd McCarthy
	Has a gaudy pop-culture personality that perfectly suits its subject.
70	Village Voice by J. Hoberman
	In a Kafkaesque turn of events, Reems was the fall guy--facing prison, he became a Hollywood cause célèbre. Inside Deep Throat includes footage of him partying with Jack and Warren and debating Roy Cohn on TV.
70	Los Angeles Times by Carina Chocano
	By turns funny and sobering, sweeping and intimate, the consistently entertaining Inside Deep Throat plays like a giddy prance through the minefield of the last three decades of American sex and politics.
67	Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Sean Axmaker
	It's a reductive moral to a story full of fascinating contradictions, but Bailey and Barbato draw a convincing line between the social and political atmosphere of the film and the culture wars of today. The issues are still very much alive.
67	Austin Chronicle by Marjorie Baumgarten
	Not even the film's director Gerard Damiano will argue for Deep Throat being a great movie. But, hey, at least there's no gag order anymore.
63	ReelViews by James Berardinelli
	Passably interesting, occasionally compelling, sporadically amusing, and badly lacking in focus.
63	Premiere by Glenn Kenny
	While brisk, informative, and entertaining, feels frustratingly sketchy.
63	New York Daily News by Jack Mathews
	Beautifully assembled and edited by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato ("The Eyes of Tammy Faye") and is often very funny.
63	Chicago Tribune by Allison Benedikt
	Full of groovy music and comic characters--many with a priceless reaction to Lovelace's oral party trick--but it hardly manages to say anything new or thoughtful.
60	Newsweek by William Underhill
	Inside Deep Throat is more scattershot than deep, but it vividly evokes the days when the "sexual revolution" was supposed to liberate the American libido.
50	LA Weekly by Ella Taylor
	Seeks to establish a pioneering role for the movie in liberating America�??s sex life. To me it�??s far from clear that that cheerfully cheesy slice of hardcore, made for $25,000 by a middle-aged hairdresser named Gerard Damiano, has spawned much in the way of a cultural legacy.
50	Film Threat by Pete Vonder Haar
	Well-crafted and, in places, highly informative, but with the exception of some of the original film's hardcore sex scenes and the aforementioned Mob angle, there's little we haven't been exposed to before.
50	Chicago Reader by J.R. Jones
	As the smirking title might suggest, the movie is least prepared to process the feminist backlash against porn movies that followed their early-70s crossover -- in a way the most interesting part of the story.
50	The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Rick Groen
	This feeble documentary ends up perpetuating the very hypocrisy it means to probe.
50	Boston Globe by Wesley Morris
	It's an unfocused overview that intersperses choppy interviews and observations with clips from "Deep Throat," including some of its most notorious and explicit scenes.
50	Salon.com by Andrew O'Hehir
	If a movie can be fascinating and tedious at the same time, Inside Deep Throat -- which more or less depicts the America I have just described -- is that movie.
50	The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
	"Deep Throat" bore an X certificate. Inside Deep Throat is an NC-17. Neither is suitable for grownups.