My Week with Marilyn (2011)

Oh what an annoying movie. Are we supposed to believe that a 23 year-old guy with stars in his eyes gets his first job at "Laurence Olivier Productions"; then, mostly through good looks and determination, worms his way up to "third assistant director", whereupon, he charms his way into the professional life of Marilyn Monroe? That's the dubious premise of this film.

"My Week With Marilyn" portrays Monroe as a basket case on set. Our 23-year old Romeo-wannabe naturally consoles her, and the two, as in a fairy-tale, celebrate a wonderful few days together. It's all just a bit too questionable.

Further, the film veritably oozes oily adulation for Marilyn Monroe. One character even falls at Monroe's feet, literally; and proclaims Marilyn the greatest actress to ever live. Our 23-year old protagonist is hardly any saner, as he follows her around like a puppy dog. Mercifully, not everyone is so star-struck, and the point clearly is made that Marilyn can't act. But oh how her entourage nurtures her ego.

Production values are acceptable, and editing is quite good. Michelle Williams does the best she can as Marilyn, but lacks Monroe's electrifying sexual allure. Eddie Redmayne as the 23-year old kid, Colin Clark, smirks too much; and when he's not speaking he needs to learn to keep his mouth closed. The best performance is by Judi Dench who plays Dame Sybil, but it's a small role.

The script, supposedly based on Colin Clark's memoirs, reeks of self-serving exaggeration of a true event. You get the feeling that the plot contains some over-extended wishful thinking. A little bit of truth here, quite a bit of fiction there; but it's all well intentioned, for viewer fun and corporate profit. There are a lot of gullible viewers around who are certainly taken in by this film. But I don't buy the story as anything other than exploitation.

Fmovies: My problem with this movie is not so much the acting, it's the story.

I've read the book, and halfway through i could not help thinking, this sounds to good to be true. The skinny dipping + sleeping with Marilyn + the way she needed advise from a 23 year old boy saying things like: Ooh Colin please tell me what should i do. etc...

It reminded my of a similar fantasy book written by a one time maid of Marilyn: Lena Pepitone and of story's told by Marilyn's neighbor Jeanne Carmen.

Unimportant people in Marilyn's life claim to have been Marilyn's confidant and best friend and decide to share these fabulous memories with the rest of the world years after all key witnesses are no longer alive.

It's a shame that serious talent, money and time was wasted to create a movie based on a shameless exploitative book like "my week with Marilyn".

I had really looked forward to seeing this and was prepared to be knocked out by Michelle Williams.

She remains a terrific favorite of mine as modern actresses go, but there were some essential things that either she or the director got wrong.

Mainly she misses the bigger-than-life aura that movie stars have to have. Her gritty indie acting is terrific and she works hard to get the emotions and make a real character. She goes for all of that in this role, but the script is so expository and contrived (with bits and pieces from other sources that are thrown in to make sure we get it).

Her radiance seems so dim in comparison to what Monroe could truly turn on. The stark contrast between the giggles and the tears was never convincing via Williams. The wallowing, self-pitying Marilyn with a streak of manipulation comes off just okay, but becomes tedious with the repetitive and slow script. In the scenes where she is being lionized by fans, her consumption of the adulation is a poor shadow show.

Branagh is terrific. Dench dynamite as Dame Sybil. But the pace and heaviness of the direction diminish their efforts. And why would Olivier be mouthing dialogue from "The Entertainer" during the making of "Prince and the Showgirl" (The "dead behind these eyes" bit)? The filmmakers really underestimate the audience. The actors playing Milton Greene and Arthur Miller make such wretched attempts at American accents, that I won't even call them out by name.

Now to Julia Ormond. Phoned in. She's not central to the story and makes rare appearances, but again, lacks the movie star command that Vivien Leigh knew precisely. When she walks in for a visit on the set, she doesn't bring the inner radiance that makes everyone treat her like royalty--a hallmark trait of Vivien Leigh. Additionally, her final confrontation with Olivier lacked the meanness and anger and resentment that Leigh had become used to verbally stabbing poor Larry with.

It is to appreciate that someone takes these acting icons and tries to show us real people--but to not direct them to give us the spark that makes these stars interesting even still, is inexcusable and, ultimately, dull filmmaking.

In the end, what could have been a delicious look into the paper persons of icons, becomes a meandering and shallow exercise in pointlessness.

My Week with Marilyn fmovies. Here's the thing: knowing this is going to be about Marilyn, we expect certain things. Dazzling beauty exuding sex, insecure film star in search of the real person; perhaps some eye-popping excess about the business responsible for fabricating our dreams. And we expect these because Marilyn's story is Hollywood lore at its most pure: a pretty picture masking darkness of all sorts.

So because we already know that Marily was not just a sparkling movie star and because this is all so widely familiar and with its own widely referenced myth and iconography, the only reason to make this into a film is that you have come up with some unique angle that sheds new unexpected light into the thing. A structure that can hold together so many cinematic dreams implicit by having at the center this woman who gave flesh to them.

At least the premise is sound, if not remarkable. A young man has written a book about his short time together with her, and on a movie set. We trust that a lot of that is fictional and doctored, itself not far from a movie script. Ideally, our film has the option of conflating personal recollection, diary, rehearsal, film being made, into our film about the fabrication of myths and an actress looking to understand the real person behind the role she's given to play.

The first half holds. A breezy, sparkling, leisurely stroll around a movie set, as we like to imagine must have been everyday life around movie stars. We bask in the radiance of making movies and play-acting. What better life?

In the second half however we expect to know the other side of the idealized image. Sex as no longer delicious eye-candy but baring the soul naked.

What do we get instead? That same stereotyped image attached to a score of movie clichés: tabloid proclamations, banality, hackneyed emotion diffused into TV soap. We know that Marilyn and this world was more complex than this. Gentlemen preferred the blonde for a reason and the film does not even begin to understand why.

Michelle Williams achieves the impossible. We believe she's Marilyn! Judi Dench is a hoot as Dame Sibyl Thorndike and Kenneth Brannagh has his moments. But the rest...Oh dear, Oh dear. Who though of Julia Ormond as Vivien Leigh!? and Eddie Redmeyer, he's a good actor, I've seen him on stage, but here he is a hole on the screen. He doesn't project anything that could possibly touch us. I remember loving "The Prince And The Showgirl" and thinking how remarkable Marilyn was. With the benefit of hindsight she had managed to keep her performance as fresh as timeless as a real work of art. While Olivier, the"actor" of his generation seems stilted and dated. My week with Marilyn misses the mark, big time but Michelle Williams performance makes it a must.

"My Week with Marilyn" is entertaining and sufficiently well done to interest anyone who remembers her story. But those who have some exposure to the literature she has generated should be impressed by the way the film manages to represent so many of the very different views there are about her. Was she a smart, predatory woman in control of her persona and milking it for all she could get? The sad addicted victim of her handlers? An ordinary woman looking for love and happiness derailed by her own star quality? The movie represents all of these views and refuses to settle the question. The writer and director are to be congratulated for resisting the temptation to come down on a particular view.