Thehibikiew Not even bad in a good way

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

SnoopyStyle It's 1917 Storyville, New Orleans. Illiterate willful twelve year old Violet (Brooke Shields)'s mother Hattie (Susan Sarandon) gives birth to a boy. They work in a high class brothel run by drug addict Nell. Ernest J. Bellocq (Keith Carradine) pays to take up residence photographing mostly Hattie. Nell puts Violet's virginity up for auction to her customers. Violet is eager to join the business but the actual act is painful. Violet starts to work as a prostitute. Hattie marries a customer and moves to St. Louis without Violet. After getting a corporal punishment, Violet runs away and moves in with Bellocq starting a sexual relationship.Violet's gleeful willing participation in her own degradation is compelling and infuriating. The most engaging scene is the auction. It is creepy with these entranced old men. That scene should be the climax. The movie cannot get any more creepy although it does try. Bellocq is all too quick to sleep with Violet. The movie meanders in the second half. It's all very sad. Brooke Shields is exceedingly young and the movie fits the definition of child porn. There is definitely some artistic merits but I don't know if it justifies pushing open the envelop.

hall895 Upon its release in 1978 Pretty Baby was shocking and controversial. Maybe all the controversy obscured the fact it was not a particularly good film. The film was famous for displaying a naked 12 year-old Brooke Shields. And that does indeed prove to be as uncomfortable to view as you would imagine. Yes, it's a story about child prostitution but that story surely could have been told without putting Shields on such display. And what of that story? Is it a good enough one to hold your interest and make for a compelling, entertaining film? Not really.The film is set in New Orleans in 1917. Life moved a little more slowly back then and Pretty Baby mirrors that. The whole film has a very languid feel to it. The pacing is slow bordering on glacial. The action, such as it is, centers on a brothel. Shields plays Violet, who lives in the house with her prostitute mother Hattie, played by Susan Sarandon. The film establishes the goings-on and routines of the house. Young Violet is not herself a prostitute. Yet. A photographer, Bellocq, shows up to take some portraits of the prostitutes. He also takes an interest in Violet, though certainly not in a sexual way. He actually seems quite asexual, hanging around the brothel constantly but with no interest in partaking in the goods on offer. The time inevitably comes for Violet to start selling herself. Her virginity is auctioned off to the highest bidder. She's excited, her mother's excited. Bellocq's not excited, he sees it for the disgusting spectacle that it is. But the deed is done, Violet becomes a full-fledged mini-prostitute and things unsurprisingly unravel from there.There is a potentially interesting, if very uncomfortable, story in here. But the film never really takes off. Right from the beginning it's a film desperately struggling for momentum and it's a struggle it never wins. It's just dull. The dialogue is rather forced and clunky with Sarandon and Keith Carradine, playing Bellocq, forced to spout lines which sound completely unnatural. The most natural, and probably best, performance in the film comes from the young Shields. Discomfiting nudity aside she's the best thing the film had to offer. Of course nobody puts the nudity to the side, that's the first thing people talk about when discussing the film. If it was a good film the Shields controversy would be an unfortunate distraction. As it is, it's not a very good film. The whole thing is just unfortunate.

tavm This was another grown-up movie I read about as a child and was curious about that I finally got to see. Since this was the one where then 12-year-old Brooke Shields played a girl raised in a brothel where her mom Susan Sarandon worked, I wondered how I'd react to some scenes where Ms. Shields was about to be deflowered by a middle-aged man or some of her nude scenes. While I did occasionally pause at some points before anticipating such sequences, I was only mildly surprised at what was depicted or implied as director Louis Malle handled such material with great restraint. Besides the two players I mentioned, Keith Carradine also should be commended for portraying the house photographer Bellocq as someone who gets very concerned whenever Shields in particular gets treated badly yet can't always control his emotions when she misbehaves. I also liked Antonio Fargas' performance as the house piano man. All those I've just mentioned, as well as the rest of the cast and crew, should be commended for the way they depicted what it must have been like in 1917 in the Storyville section of New Orleans, Louisiana, during that time when the U.S. had just entered the first World War and the morality police were about to close places like the one depicted here. Certainly, since I live about a two-hour drive from where this all took place and was filmed in, it raised my awareness of what things were like there in the early 20th century and makes me want to learn more about it. Anyway, Pretty Baby should not be condemned as child pornography as like I said, there's no erotically explicit scenes of sex and it's not the only thing it's about anyway. And besides, Ms. Shields seems to have done all right by herself considering the subsequent films she made concerning her sexuality...

L. Denis Brown This is an exceptional film - not because most of the critics say so, but for me because I cannot think of any other film which left me with a greater feeling of having been temporarily transported to another world in a place and time with which I was totally unfamiliar.Many IMDb users have reviewed and commented on this film and another full review is unnecessary, but bringing out its exceptional nature and encouraging those who have not seen it to do so does require some supplementation. Comments about the nudity in this film not being disturbing come into this category. Today nudity occurs in films for two principal reasons, firstly because it would be natural for the character concerned under the circumstances being depicted by the film, or secondly because it is being used by the director to add a little eye candy intended to increase the visual appeal of the film. In the latter case the viewers personal reaction will govern the response to such eye candy, (typically for example, regardless of whether or not they themselves appreciate it, many viewers feel that this is very inappropriate for younger viewers and all films should provide advance warning when it is present). But where the nudity is an integral part of the story being presented, viewers who wish to see this story should not find it disturbing unless the nude scenes are excessive or gross. Pretty Baby is not such a film, it is one where Louis Malle has minimized his use of nudity - any less and the nature and character of the scenario he has to depict could become distorted. He should be commended on his restraint which may have made it much easier for some viewers to concentrate on the more serious issues raised in the film.When this film was first released the sequence showing the brothel auctioning the virginity of their new girl to the highest bidder raised a lot of eyebrows, and clearly many in the audiences had not appreciated that this practice used to be commonplace. Most viewers found the sequence disturbing, but in Pretty Baby the fact that Violet had been raised to expect this, and was looking forward to it as an important step towards entering adult life, greatly reduced its impact. Another film, French Quarter, which was released the same year as Pretty Baby, was the story of an orphaned girl who had been strictly brought up on a farm, but who had had to take refuge in a city brothel to avoid starvation when her parents died. Those who saw it will remember that it included a similar auction which I for one found much more harrowing to watch as it clearly showed the trauma inflicted on an unprepared and very reluctant young girl, starting of course as she was being stripped and paraded for public exhibition. Any such sequences provide very uncomfortable viewing for most men, who tend to thankfully take refuge in a conviction that they could never occur today.Other scenes showing the exploitation inherent in life as it was lived in Storyville in 1917 were also found to be disturbing by many viewers; and some comments even suggest a widely held conviction that we live in a more moral society today. Before we condemn our forbears we should perhaps examine this conviction in more detail. In Europe and North America we have quite recently moved away from a society where marriages among the upper classes were regarded as primarily intended to enhance social status and generate offspring. Wives frequently did not love their husbands and, although they dutifully provided children, they were often happy for him to exercise his virility with paid companions. Visits to a local brothel, where regular customers could became friendly with all the staff, were condoned or even approved. This often led to a reasonably stable environment for the young women concerned. Today most of us would strongly disapprove of such lifestyles, and would rightly emphasize how far we have progressed by ensuring young people have the opportunity to choose their own lifetime partner; but we still need to be honest about the problems this new lifestyle has created today. There were few Robert Pickton's feeding twenty-six victims to his pigs in Victorian times. Today we frequently encounter police warnings about serial killers; in Victorian times Jack the Ripper was a much more unique character. Too many of today's prostitutes shiver in the rain or snow on street corners throughout long evenings each night, periodically spending an infrequent few uncomfortable minutes in a car - each time at an unknown risk to themself - and are forced afterwards to give almost all their takings to a pimp attached to the local street gang. We need to recognize that many of them would probably regard living in a comfortable and stable brothel, such as that depicted in this film, as akin to heaven on earth.Ultimately this is the powerful message from Pretty Baby that makes it such an exceptional film; but because the Director decided to employ a totally non-judgmental documentary type presentation and to minimise any direct emotional appeal, most viewers probably only recognize it when scenes returned to their memory during the hours and days after they left the cinema, and I do not believe its rare combination of beautiful imagery and haunting power has so far been brought out adequately by the comments on this database.