It's trying to be too many things during its short runtime, which of course means that it's not really doing a good job of covering any one thing. We do an okay job covering the owners and the family and we get a quick overview of the store's history, but I really wanted more on all fronts. The director and narrator is the daughter of the owners, so she obviously has her priorities and what she considers important is different than what I do and I'm sure what I consider important is probably different than what LGBT people find important. I wanted more history and more of the weird juxtaposition of these two reserved Jewish people running a store full of hardcore pornography and buttplugs. We breeze through the business developments and focus a lot on the family. They all have a great story, but the documentary is so short that there isn't room for everything. As much as I loved hearing from the LGBT community about what the store meant to them and from Larry Flint about the fight against pornography, it took up time that I wanted spent on other things; it's just not long enough to do everything it tries to do. For what it is, it's expertly paced and there isn't anything that isn't important or interesting, but an hour and a half isn't enough for a fair coverage of the store, the community, the war against indecency, the owners, and the owner's family. Short of being a miniseries, I'm not sure what they could have done, but the lack of focus. I did tear up a little bit at the end, but I can't help but imagine the impact if I got one whole story instead of five partial ones (made worse by the abrupt ending and lack of any sort of epilogue).
It's trying to be too many things during its short runtime, which of course means that it's not really doing a good job of covering any one thing. We do an okay job covering the owners and the family and we get a quick overview of the store's history, but I really wanted more on all fronts. The director and narrator is the daughter of the owners, so she obviously has her priorities and what she considers important is different than what I do and I'm sure what I consider important is probably different than what LGBT people find important. I wanted more history and more of the weird juxtaposition of these two reserved Jewish people running a store full of hardcore pornography and buttplugs. We breeze through the business developments and focus a lot on the family. They all have a great story, but the documentary is so short that there isn't room for everything. As much as I loved hearing from the LGBT community about what the store meant to them and from Larry Flint about the fight against pornography, it took up time that I wanted spent on other things; it's just not long enough to do everything it tries to do. For what it is, it's expertly paced and there isn't anything that isn't important or interesting, but an hour and a half isn't enough for a fair coverage of the store, the community, the war against indecency, the owners, and the owner's family. Short of being a miniseries, I'm not sure what they could have done, but the lack of focus. I did tear up a little bit at the end, but I can't help but imagine the impact if I got one whole story instead of five partial ones (made worse by the abrupt ending and lack of any sort of epilogue).
