My Week with Marilyn (2011)

IMDb Listing
I knew this movie wouldn’t amount to much from the opening shot, of a young man named Colin (played by Eddie Redmayne) gazing longingly at a movie screen showing Marilyn Monroe. It’s such an obvious opening to a movie about Monroe (played here by Michelle Williams), and it signaled that this would be yet another rumination about the appeal of Monroe instead of a movie about Monroe herself. My initial judgment turned out to be all too accurate, and the movie’s insights about its subject amount to little other than the cliched notion that Monroe was, like, a real person under her public persona. Duh. There are all sorts of problems with the movie, such as the way it’s structured around the least interesting character in the movie (Colin, hired as a production assistant on Monroe’s new movie), to the not-very-compelling clash between Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh), hired to direct Monroe’s new movie, and his top star. I also think that Williams, who is one of the most talented actresses in the world, is nonetheless dead wrong for the role. Williams is a very down-to-earth, sensitive performer, which stands in stark contrast to Monroe’s persona, and the result is unconvincing. Still, she couldn’t have saved the movie anyway. There’s just nothing to see here except hollow iconography. 4/10