Such a frustrating disappointment

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

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Has much better acting than Boogie Nights but a weaker plot. In looking at some reviews and comments I notice that a certain maturity seems to be required to appreciate the film as it presents more than one-dimensional characters in a controversial subject area. Many actions can also be interpreted more than one way. It is the story of Moon, a veteran porn star who is becoming well known after 5 years of movie and Internet fame, and her life which is more than being a porn star.There are many scenes of the porn industry presented in a matter of fact fashion. Viewers may have different moral or ethical judgments or opinions about character motivations.James Woods plays Moon's "Pop" suffering from Parkinson's in an excellent portrayal. Other porn stars have guest appearances. Juliette Marquis is excellent and beautiful.Recommended for mature adult and broad minded viewers.SPOILERS.....A theme brought up in the beginning of the movie of the difference between men and women is explored in the later half of the movie as she starts a sexual infidelity investigation service.The basic question toward the end of the movie is rather she should continue her porn career when a boyfriend and the other career opportunity offer alternatives.

After the success of the inexpensively made trade movie "Boogie Nights," one might expect a series of even cheaper and less skillful ripoffs. The usual trajectory for ripoffs would be more sex and less character.I suppose in some ways, we wouldn't have "This Girl's Life" if we hadn't had "Boogie Nights," but this film is actually pretty good. If the earlier film was mostly an ensemble effort, this one depends on Juliette Marquis. We see things almost exclusively from her point of view. She's a porn star with a heart of gold and some brains. It sounds like a cliché, but she pulls it off okay. She's not exactly beautiful but she is sexy and exotic and has a nasal voice that sometimes drops into the lower register.But Marquis gets surprisingly good support from such mainstream players as Rosario Dawson, and adequate support from Cheyenne Silver, a genuine star of sex films who has a fresh-faced attractiveness that suggests she grew up on a farm and fed on nothing but cream and ripe strawberries. Anyone who wants to see what she looks like all over can easily have his curiosity satisfied with a bit of effort.James Woods is super as Pops, Marquis' father who is stricken with Parksinson's disease. He's a courageous actor, wandering around in public with what seems to be an enormous head and a shrunken flabby body. The only investment of ego on display is his talent.If "Boogie Nights" showed us that the sex movie industry of the 1970s was like a family, "This Girl's Life" demonstrates that the family is not entirely functional these days. The head of the studio keeps carrying on paternally about how we are all one big -- incestuous -- family, but when he wants one of his girls to do something that she does not want to do, he prompts her to do a line of coke and shoves her roughly against a wall. Spare the rod and spoil the child, you know.The director has Marquis talk directly to the camera on several occasions, as if this were a reality TV show. She shows us how a microvideocamera works, a "spy camera" like that used in police and FBI stings. And there are times when scenes appear as if shot with one of those tiny cameras, all fuzzy and with horizontal lines. Not sure what the point of that was. And I'm not sure what happens to Pop either. His case seems to be hanging in the air at the end when, after a violent encounter with a man whose life Marquis has just professionally put an end to, she takes off with her naive young monogamous lover.I assume -- I HOPE -- that she finally got back to taking care of Pops, because his disorder is rather advanced and it would take him an hour to peel a banana.In any case, the very amateurishness of some of the performances contributes to the documentary feel of the film, but it's a documentary that is emotionally charged.A surprise, well worth watching.

I thought this movie would probably be the turkey of the three that I rented one evening. Instead, it was the best one. The sex was not overdone or gratuitous, and certain of the characters were nicely drawn out. I wasn't all that impressed with James Woods, but then again, I seldom am. Before any movie that he's in is over, I'm tired of the guy, even if he started out as interesting. An exception was the flick where he played the newspaper editor with Clint Eastwood as the washed-up reporter. As I recall, he didn't begin to wallow in himself like he usually does. In this movie, the scene at his birthday party where he goes on and on about "taking a s***" was the one that turned me off. I mean, how many times do you have to say that to try and shock the pretty girls, Woods? I give him a chance because he went to medical school before turning to acting, so he ain't dumb, but I just don't like him much.The standout performance in this movie was clearly from Michael Rappaport as the car dealer. God, what a creep and what a frigging psycho! He was so weird and so convincing that he didn't seem to be acting at all. It was bad enough the first time Moon encountered him. You could just tell that sick freak was gonna turn ugly on her the way he was grabbing her and slobbering all over her with that disgusting tongue of his. She should have made her escape QUICKLY, not dawdling around like that, which is why he caught up with her. She was lucky to get away, and then he showed up again, obviously ready to kill her. He must be a nut in real life. He was just too violent and scary to be acting. You know how some of those guys with red hair can be. Yup, you're one hell of an actor, Michael, you frigging nutjob!I liked the way the porn producer turned out to be a real scumbag. He was always pretending to be so nice and so concerned about his girls, unless they refused to do what he wanted, like making that black girl pull a train with 20 guys. When Moon refused to renew her contract, he issued a thinly-veiled threat against her, too. It probably wasn't a coincidence that the car dealer found and attacked her right outside his studio a few moments after she quit.I found the comments about the movie and the porn industry made by Rosario Dawson to be very interesting. It is uncommon for a woman to be both beautiful and so intelligent and articulate, while intelligent actresses are extremely rare.

Subject matter: old and tired. Execution: a film student or my Grannie could have done better! In the hands of a skilled director and some actors, not models (!) to play the leading roles, this could have been something interesting. This is one of those things that will be looked upon with some curiosity and interest in some backwater village in a hut on a bootleg DVD somewhere in Siberia: ahem! so this is how people live in corrupt LA? How do these people get to make films? ASH. Now that's an artistic name... the director that is, basically who has no idea about how to create drama and story thrust. How does he get to make this film with all that money and people involved? Pretty girls in a film dealing with adult biz in and around LA - how numbingly boring! How do these people get to have James Woods (who was the only person worth watching in this film, playing a man with Parkinson's), Rosario Dawson in this film? It's the usual march of the models, who can't act and really wear on you with their seductive, prerehearsed, phony, pouting lips, self-conscious moves, trying to be serious actors crap. Give me a break! Shot on HD (read: digital video) which is not a bad thing in itself, but in the hands of an unskilled DP it looks like something ripped from a bad cable reality show.Story? What story? This girl's life. Who gives a beep! A humongous w..nk for all involved.There is really not much to say for this film except, avoid it and watch something else worthwhile watching.