Love, Marilyn

I love Marilyn and this documentary was really great at showing more of her that I haven't seen before and things I really didn't know about her.

The one thing that I hated (which is why I gave it an 8/10) is the awful readings by all these actors. They did a horrible job and all overacted and exaggerated all her diary readings. For me that ruined the movie and it would have been awesome with just a unknown backperson reading as Marilyn.

The only ones who I thought did a good job was Lindsey Lohan and Elizabeth Banks, and that's because they just acted naturally.

But I just found myself getting confused about if it was them talking or them reading as Marilyn.

Overall though, I loved the new insight into Marilyns life and the hurtful ending to her life.

This is an HBO documentary about the life of Marilyn Monroe. Ostensively, 2 new boxes of personal papers has recently been founded in storage. It's not really strictly an organized personal journals. The movie is able to fit those writings with some of her experiences and other people's writings. It tells most of her story from her point of view. She comes off as a hard-working, ambitious, emotionally, and most of all smarter than her persona. I did find that the filmmakers treated her too much with kids gloves sometimes. Her sporadic work schedule is too easily explained away as her acting methodology. The girl had problems. The movie is a little too gentle with her.

Overall it's a fascinating look inside an icon. I wish it had more depth especially with her early life. It is interesting to see how driven she was as a young starlet. The other noteworthy aspect is the use of big name actors to read the writing. I'm willing to buy into so many different actresses reading Marilyn's writing. However I found the camera moves too much sometimes in an obvious visual attempt to inject feeling into those readings. It is more distracting than helpful. The movie should just let those actresses read.

While it's interesting after a fashion to hear these actors read her journals and try to make them come alive, sometimes too empathetically, it becomes repetitive after a while. What could have added an extra needed dimension to this since they gathered such an amazing array of talent is to have these respected thespians, well except for Lohan, tell what value they found in Marilyn's work and what she meant to them. It would have added a more personal touch and since the actors involved are a broad spectrum of ages and techniques it would have shown how someone who was often dismissed as a lightweight had an impact on screen that bridged generations.

Still this is worth seeing, if for nothing else the clips of Marilyn. Only a few are different from the ones that are usually shown but as always she glows with an interior light.

When I saw this documentary was on HBO I tuned in and wanted to see what it was all about, I wasn't that impressed. The letters straight from Marilyn's thoughts were interesting and heartfelt but having them read by Hollywooace actors just didn't work that well In my opinion. When SOME of these A listers read from the aforementioned letters they seemed like they themselves were making it all about them and not Marilyn at all. The lines from the letters were often over dramatized and poorly executed and would have been more effective had they just come from an unseen source. Overall this film seemed like it made everyone else out to be the bad guy when it came to Marilyn's unhappiness and misfortune and maybe that was the case, who can say. Although when Marilyn didn't know her lines and often didn't show up to the set for a variety of reasons I'm sure that it could wear on a director or producer who was probably under the gun to finish the picture as it is. Although Marilyn was often trouble on the set her performances on the big screen were always pure, genuine and special but the film made her out to be a troubled pawn in the chess game of Hollywood life and to me the film could have been more objective at times. Overall this is not a bad film (especially if you love Marilyn) but nothing to write home about, pun intended.

Love, Marilyn (2012)

*** (out of 4)

Nice documentary done on the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe. Through diary writings and other words written by the star, we hear these brought to life by various actors playing her as well as playing other people that surrounded the tragic star. A quick look at IMDb will show just how many familiar names were used to bring these words to life and I think for the most part the film is a success, although this technique doesn't quite work as well as I'm sure the producers were hoping. I will start off with the good and that's how the film pretty much starts from Marilyn's early days and leads right up to her death. We get to see everything in between including her personal life, her marriages, her film roles and of course her darker days. Throughout all of this one really gets a good idea of what frame of mind the actress was in whether it was her nerves getting the best of her or when everything came together and she managed to do some incredible work. I've read other reviews that have attacked the film for being too kind on Monroe but I guess this here will be based on the viewer and their opinion on the subject. One case is Monroe's final film, which Fox fired her from because she wasn't getting the work done. This documentary makes it seem that Fox was more to blame than anyone else. There's also the know issues Monroe had working with Lawrence Olivier but this film claims that Monroe was causing all these problems (not knowing lines, being late) not because she wanted to but because she was sticking it to the director for something rude he said to her. Either way, fans of Monroe should at least enjoy seeing the film clips and hearing some of these words that the legend wrote.