Martha, Inc.: The Story of Martha Stewart

I'm not a big fan of Martha Stewart. I'm undecided on the insider trading issue, and I don't buy her stuff anyway. But this film was just this side of slander, portraying her as a self-obsessed jerk who bullies everyone around her into doing what SHE wants. Forget the fact that she's an exceptional salesmen. Forget the fact she's one of the most popular icons in media. Forget all that and... well, you still can't accept the movie. The acting royally sucked (Martha doesn't sound anything like that!) and they went out of their way to get ugly people to portray her, whereas in reality Martha is quite an attractive woman. Slander. Sue 'em, Martha!

Martha Inc. is actually worth watching to see Cybill Shepherd's take on the character. She really delves into the role and begins to show a sympathetic and vulnerable side to her. Sure, she's pretty and definitely intelligent, perhaps a genius. She worked Wall Street and modeled her way through College. She got married and had a daughter but domestic bliss was never enough for Martha. She wanted more and more in time. She became a successful Connecticut caterer. Even though she won't admit it, she is born and bred in New Jersey to Polish born Parents who immigrated to America. She was brought up in a large ethnic family rather than the small waspy family in Connecticut. Maybe Martha was no great wife or mother but she is creative and brilliant enough to succeed in a man's world. She has done it with class and brilliance. This movie does portray the messy divorce and the affair that broke up this longtime union. Martha may not have best people personilaty but just compare her to Barbra Streisand who is far more difficult. Martha is a perfectionist but brilliant and creative enough to establish herself as a household name. This success always comes with such sacrifice like a marriage and an estranged relationship with her daughter. Most men have often done this but why does it bother people when it is a woman? You go girl, Martha.

As the movie opens, Martha Stewart is cheerfully entering the studio where her TV series is filmed, behaving exactly like the charming, sickeningly perfect Martha we all know. Then she gets angry because things aren't exactly as the should be. Once on camera, she returns to the familiar calm, serene personality--until something else goes wrong!

Then comes the scandal that ruined Martha's reputation in the eyes of many, but not all. I remember the scene on the CBS morning show going a little differently, but then I only saw a partial clip. It was a little more exciting and dramatic here.

Then we see flashbacks. I find it hard to believe Martha would have sabotaged a competitor as a young child, but not everything has to be the truth in movies such as these. Then we see the teenage Martha and we begin to understand why she turned out the way she did. Her father was also a perfectionist, and nothing was ever good enough for him. Meanwhile, Martha has a hard time making friends because of her need to be perfect and better than everyone else.

Martha goes to college and begins a modeling career, and she meets her future husband. We see the events that led to her becoming the icon she is today. In short, even when it finally happened, she was not content to be a suburban housewife. She saw the opportunity to make her housewife status into something much more, and she risked a friendship and her marriage to become famous.

I thought Cybill Shepherd did a wonderful job. She did the on-screen perfect Martha very nicely, even to the point of being almost satirical. She could be perky as well, but when she was, she seemed like Cybill. But she was mostly the determined, confident and generally intolerant Martha that we have never seen. And she did that quite nicely. When she had to make the big business deals herself, rather than depending on others, it was quite exciting to watch. The actors playing Martha's father (who was demanding but occasionally tender) and the teenage Martha (charming and actually adorable) also made quite an impression.

It wasn't pleasant, but this may very well have been the way it happened. As is true of many movies like this, it presented mostly the negative side, but there is only so much that can be done in two hours. I wasn't expecting nearly as much from her early years, but we needed to see that background. At least we got to see that Martha wasn't as perfect as we may have thought. A good job by everyone. Not a masterpiece, but a good TV-movie.

First of all, let me say right out that I don't love Martha Stewart. I'm not a MS apologist. Hell, I don't even watch her show, because even I, half-brained cynic that I am, can discern that MS is essentially a product of the Wall Street/Madison Avenue/Corporate America hype-world. She's an invented hype-machine that gets people all excited about the infinite wonders of perfecting the "home living experience", and then... (drum roll please)... Corporate America is right there to sell all those many many products just to make that dream of perfection come true. The Martha Stewart line of products at K-Mart is one of the more obvious manifestations of this reality.

Be that as it may, I didn't like this heavy-handed "hit piece" of a film. It seems each and every scene was capped off with an emphatic little clincher to ensure the viewer was left with the thought: "Oh_My_Gawd!!! What a horrid stinker of a person that Martha Stewart really is!!! Ewwwww!!!"

Anyway, I thought the movie was a non-stop stream of hitting below the belt. I thought Cybill Shepherd looked and talked NOT AT ALL like the (real) Martha Stewart I've seen on t.v. (what little I've seen of her, that is...). As such, I thought the movie was unintentionally funny. I couldn't stop laughing at how absurd Cybill Shepherd looked, trying to make MS look absurd.

I would have appreciated more of the negative emphasis be put on the corporate hypsters that invent the Martha Stewarts in the first place. Also, I would have liked more negative bias towards mindless home-makers who get so damned obsessive about all those frilly, frivolous things in the first place. (I recently saw a PBS program entitled "Affluenza". That would make for an excellent follow-on viewing after seeing this film about Martha Stewart and the MS way of living.)

Anyway, a couple of years ago at K-Mart I bought a mattress pad for my bed. The Martha Stewart line. Don't know what the thread count is, but it is the most comfortable darned thing I've ever slept on. Thanks, Martha Stewart!

This is a fairly simple morality tale about what happens when you become an overachiever, when vaulting ambition demands ever higher achievement.

Martha in her demand to make a splash, ignores her husband and child.

If Martha were male, she might be looked on as a heroic figure who sacrificed personal happiness.

I have always been amazed at how effortlessly Martha creates domestic perfection. Here, you see behind the covers at the panic and stress to create that illusion.

The movie points out Martha was once a stock broker, so when she was nailed on insider trading, she could not very well claim naiveté.