I finally got around to watching Howl on Netflix Instant. James Franco was brilliant, as expected. It was a great take on Mr. Ginsberg's poem, which is definitely one of my favorites of all time. Admittedly, the animation parts were a bit odd, but the court scenes with Jon Hamm were awesome, as was the Ginsberg "interview," which was basically Franco chain-smoking and recounting his tale of the late '50s. All in all it was pretty good, better than I thought it would be going in. I expected it to be a little too "art house-y" for my tastes, but I didn't come away with that impression at all.
Overall, I'd give it a 3.9 out of 5, if not just for the awesome performances by the whole cast. I'd recommend it to anyone with an appreciation of literature, namely The Beat Generation.