Anna Nicole: star déchue

Agnes Brucker is beautiful. More beautiful than Anna Nicole for sure. The prosthetic breasts they add on to her are actually quite good and convincing. I was pretty impressed by that. Agnes' performance here can be measured a couple of different ways: was it good on its own merits and does it pass the George C. Scott test? If you take out the "playing a real person" aspect, her performance was perfectly adequate for your average Lifetime drivel. But if you judge her by whether she accurately captured Anna Nicole, then no she did not. She seemed more often than not like a caricature. Not that Anna Nicole was anything deeper than what we saw. I highly doubt she was. Still, people are people and even the likes of the Kardashians or Anna Nicole Smith don't act off camera like they do on. So when you're portraying a person like that and you're playing them based solely on stuff you've seen on camera (including interviews), you're not going to have a fully formed idea of who they were.

Anyway, the movie is not very good. The gimmick where her older/younger self appears to her is cheesy and laugh-inducing. I think doing a bio for a woman famous for taking her clothes off is kind of hard to do on a network where you can't show nudity. Perhaps an R rated movie would have at least had more cheesecake to admire. Anyway, if you're a fan of Agnes Bruckner, check it out. She's in every scene and most of the time wearing very little.

Anna Nicole (2013)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Made-for-TV movie from Lifetime about the life of Anna Nicole Smith (Agnes Bruckner) who we see as a young single mother to her marriage to billionaire J. Howard Marshall (Martin Landau) and of course through her troubled drug use. ANNA NICOLE is nicely directed by Mary Harron and it features some good performances but in the end there are just way too many problems for it to work as well as it needed to. For starters, the film seems pretty rushed trying to fit all of Smith's story into a 90-minute running time as we bounce around quite a bit and the film never really seems to focus on anything. Another problem are a few gimmicks that are used throughout the picture including a really silly one where the young Smith sees a "future" version of herself. At the same time, the older Smith seeing a "younger" version of herself has no impact either. I'd also say that the movie doesn't work with the silly narration, which is coming from the dead Smith looking back over her life. With that said, Bruckner does a nice job in the lead role even though she never really looks or acts like the real person. For the most part I thought she did a good job at showing a troubled person. Landau easily steals the picture as the elderly man who falls in love with the stripper he meets and Cary Elwes is also good as his son. Adam Goldberg does a nice job in the role of Howard K. Stern and Virginia Madsen is good as Smith's mother, although the screenplay really doesn't do many favors for the character. Harron does a nice job at keeping the film moving at a good pace but there's just too many issues with the screenplay for this to be a complete winner. It also doesn't help that Smith isn't all that sympathetic. Still, for a made-for-TV film this here isn't too bad as a quick time killer.

TV biopics rarely have the sort of depth that a feature has. I was looking forward to this one because I've always admired and enjoyed Director Mary Harron's work. But not even a really good cast and director could make this film any deeper than its subject matter. In all fairness, there wasn't that much to say without speculating -- which wasn't really the purpose of the film.

Fresh on the heels of the amazing HBO documentary called "Love, Marilyn," I was anxious to see how Anna Nicole's story would unfold, given that Marilyn Monroe was such an obvious inspiration for Anna Nicole. Certainly, if anyone in this century embodied sex appeal in some of the same ways as Marilyn, it would be Anna. However, unlike Marilyn - there was really never any attempt apparent that she took acting very seriously as Marilyn did.

I'd be interested to know how much Lifetime producers may have interfered with the production of Anna Nicole because that would be a sure indicator of a less than stellar production to follow.

I wasn't expecting all that much, given the subject matter - but I was at least expecting a more enlightening rendering of it. It's not bad enough not to see -- but it was nothing that merits seeing again, for sure.

Following the rocky road and life a times of Playboy model and 'actress' Anna Nicole Smith up to her untimely death of 39.

Actress Agnes Bruckner delivers a fine portray of the larger than life troubled Anna Nicole/Vicky Lynn. While not being an Anna look-a-like Bruckner certainly captures Anna's spirit and persona, at times effectively laying down some of heart wrenching scenes. Although this a steppingstone presentation of her life, it covers the main highs and lows but leaves you with a lingering feeling that it's a little rushed.

The acting for the most part is impressive especially from Bruckner, Cary Elwes - Marshall's son, Virginia Madsen - Anna's mother and Martin Landau as billionaire J. Howard Marshall. American Psycho (2000) director Mary Harron keeps it interesting and fast paced. The prosthetic make-up effects of Anna's assets and weight gain are particularly notable.

The Anna's voice from the grave aspect, her younger self and Marilyn Monroe vision/dream additions scripted by Joe Batteer and John Rice keep the proceedings at times eerily compelling.

Its an especially well made for a TV movie and thankfully treats the departed with respect while at the same time being entertaining and highlighting the superficial world of celebrities. As an anti-drug movie look no further and to the producers credit ironically and in contrast to Anna's real life job offers it's certainly not a cheap cash-in.

This film was not geniously architected, but it portrays Vicky/ Anna in a honorable way, and the viewer never see an obscene image from the beginning to the end of this piece. We all knew that Anna Nicole had a reputation to be a sex, drugs and rock & roll abuser, but, through the scenes it's well notorious the unconditional love that she had for her son, Daniel. He was always her light, the star that shine in her life. And it's factual too, that she did the best she could, the best that she had learned herself, since she was alone throughout her young adult life and motherhood. Yes, she was over the top, and not politically correct, but that character/ personality aggregated to her overwhelming appearance made her who she was: the desirable, yet suffering with inner trauma, 21st century Marylin Monroe. The director made an excellent job with this biography movie, showing more the personality, the human being, without focusing too much in the scandals and on the negative side of her life. Over all, I was expecting worse and have a slightly good surprise. And this goes into the light.