THE LOOK OF LOVE plunges its audience back into the world of pubs where you could smoke, gentleman’s clubs, top shelf magazines. I call it sleaze. Women’s liberation is defined as to angling your extremities in such a way that pleases the male gaze. But let’s not see too much hair.

Director Michael Winterbottom’s film is nominally a bio-pic of the self-styled Sultan of Soho, Paul Raymond, born Jeffrey Quinn and played by Steve Coogan.

Now I don’t know what the general consensus is, but I don’t think of Steve Coogan as an actor. He can do accents and scruff up when he is doing Paul or Pauline Calf. But he’s cheese. He can do pompous, vain, foolish and quite mad, usually with the merest hint of a regional accent. He might have starred in HAMLET 2, but his two best performances are as Steve Coogan in THE TRIP and A COCK AND BULL STORY and Norwich DJ Alan Partridge in the long-running, and thoroughly run out of steam in my view, television series.

The Paul Raymond that he plays is a media savvy entrepreneur, a bit of a shit (I’m British, we say that here) and, at the start of the film, an emotional wreck. His daughter Debbie (Imogen Poots), darling Debbie, the heir to my property empire Debbie, failed actress Debbie, would be impresario Debbie, failure Debbie, coke head Debbie, is dead.

The film is of course really about her.

There’s a film critic in the UK who likes to begin sentences with ‘here’s the thing’.

Here’s the thing. We do not relate to Paul, sorry Jeffrey, as a man on the rise who struggles against adversity and sees a gap in the market (pun intended, but quite inappropriate) to create a pornographic empire – that’s what it was. No, at the start of the film, he’s already a showman, acquiring his first theatre and putting on a barely acceptable show. A court case for him is a publicity act. Sue me? I’ve lost? Never mind, assembled members of the press, come and see my show. You have to join though. Members only!

So at the start of the film Paul, sorry Jeffrey, is happily married. Well, he’s happily married. His wife (Anna Friel) isn’t. He has a roving eye. He returns to bed at two in the morning. Is that lipstick on his trousers? Just lipstick?

Needless to say, she divorces him. Paul, sorry Jeffrey consolidates his relationship with his mistress, who becomes the star of his show, Lady Godiva – Lady Godawful, more like – Fiona Richmond (Tamsin Egerton). She becomes editor of his tasteful erotic new publication, Men Only.

After some early scenes in the 1980s, it goes all black and white for us in the 1960s – not much depth there – then in colour when the censorship laws are relaxed. Paul gets a business partner, Tony (Chris Addison, with a fright beard) who suggests the idea of the magazine. This becomes a big money spinner.

Now if I was an aficionado of the spunk mag genre, I would want to know how Men Only stole a march on Playboy and how the market expanded. I think it is fair to say that such a history is not within the purview of Winterbottom or writer Matt Greenhalgh. The film has a dramatic arc, the life and death of a daughter, and incidentally describes how Paul, sorry Jeffrey became the richest man in England. He had a penthouse with a sunroof that opened up like something out of James Bond. ‘Do you expect me to name the stars?’ ‘No I expect you to –‘ ... and that’s quite enough.

The father-daughter relationship is quite banal. He was quite a permissive father, according to the film, but only to the family that he acknowledged. In one scene, he meets his son from a previous relationship. He is cold, awkward; an evening passes without him making a connection. Paul, sorry Jeffrey does not want one. When Debbie is revealed to have a taste for cocaine, Paul, sorry Jeffrey advises her to only get the good stuff; ‘don’t go to any old dealer.’ ‘I’m taking Tony’s.’ ‘Oh, that’s all right then.’

THE LOOK OF LOVE runs only 97 minutes, but it’s long slog. With a comedian in the title role, I could not take it seriously. I could not laugh either. I felt it was a one-sided view of the superficially charming but casually cruel Paul, sorry Jeffrey.

It is tempting to describe this as a British BOOGIE NIGHTS without the huge Dirk Diggler appendage. Except that Winterbottom has no such ambitions.  In any case, it lacks an interesting cast of characters. There’s rather too much pathos and not enough about the scene. Who were Paul’s competitors? How did he respond? Where was the ruthless streak in business that made him so successful? Why did he not end up on DRAGON’S DEN? (Answer: because he died before the TV show first aired.)

It is sentimental and boring. I don’t know who would enjoy it. Of course, as the posters say, the performances are good, but the characters aren’t interestingly developed. I had the look of boredom. No Burt Bacharach song there...