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Howl

Country: USA, Language: English, 90 mins

  • Director: Rob Epstein; Jeffrey Friedman
  • Writer: Rob Epstein; Jeffrey Friedman
  • Producer: Lynn Appelle; Brian Benson

CGiii Comment

It looks good - the animation is professional and includes unnecessarily well-hung characters.

The actors all deliver - Franco, at times, a little weak.

As to the poem - it's subjective.

Crap or genius? It doesn't really matter - it's about free speech, freedom to write...the American Lady Chatterley.

Is it enough to keep the viewer interested? No, it's not - the constant repetition is frustrating.

There is enough material so why bother repeating the same thing over and over again...oh not that line again.

Ultimately, it is rather dull...monotonous and, regrettably, uninsightful.

Those who know nothing of Ginsberg will think he was a young, troubled man who wrote a quirky poem with dirty words and got himself into a whole lot of trouble.

Actually, he didn't, his publisher did...by printing it.

Ginsberg did not appear at the trial - an act of indescribable selfishness - please publish my poem...a stab in the publishers back.

It is an introduction to Ginsberg and to that movement that liked beating on and on...important to a select few then - but, alas, not now.

Sorry, but that is the truth - all gone...the dust lies thick on the jackets.


Trailer...

The(ir) Blurb...

It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and animation that echoes the poem's surreal style. All three coalesce in hybrid that dramatizes the birth of a counterculture.

Cast & Characters

James Franco as Allen Ginsberg;
Jon Hamm as Jake Ehrlich;
Mary-Louise Parker as Gail Potter;
Jeff Daniels as Professor David Kirk;
Alessandro Nivola as Luther Nichols;
David Strathairn as Ralph McIntosh;
Treat Williams as Mark Schorer;
Aaron Tveit as Peter Orlovsky;
Jon Prescott as Neal Cassady;
Todd Rotondi as Jack Kerouac;
Andrew Rogers as Lawrence Ferlinghetti;
Cecilia Foss as Beatnik Poet