SOURCE: Simon, John. “Sex and Violence, Together Again.” National Review (10 November 1989): 61–63.

In the following excerpt, Simon offers a negative assessment of sex, lies, and videotape, calling it “overrated” and “irritating.”

Sex, lies, and videotape may be the most overrated, and is surely the most irritating, movie in some time. Made by 26-year-old Steven Soderbergh in his home town of Baton Rouge, it won best-film honors at Cannes for its writer-director, and best-actor prize for James Spader, who plays Graham, a young man who returns to Baton Rouge after a nine-year absence. He comes both to see his old flame, Elizabeth, and not to see her, both with a wad of money and with no visible source for it, both to arouse the two women in the story and to declare himself impotent, both to seem a perfect scoundrel and to end up in what promises to be a...