Woody Harrelson is unsettlingly likeable as the self-made multi-millionaire publisher, with the erstwhile Mrs Cobain, Courtney Love, as his bisexual stripper wife. Both are good, with Love scummily watchable in her lead debut, and there is strong support from Edward Norton as Flynt's long-suffering lawyer.

Long-suffering because, as the pornographer himself points out, he's the dream client: rich and always in trouble. Together, and despite a shooting that wounds both, leaving the crude, self-publicising Flynt in a wheelchair, they bodily drag freedom of the press through every court in the land.

And we applaud their ultimate victory: it's a tale worth telling even if director Forman tells it with little visual flair or imagination. Far better is a script by Ed Wood scribes Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski that never lets us feel anything less than queasy, even as the cheers ring out. The limits of a free society are tested by its monsters, they say, but in Forman's hands the argument feels muted. But then again, making a Hollywood picture about a hardcore pornographer was always going to be like making an omelette without breaking any eggs.