To me, this movie is perfection.

Better Late Then Never

A Brilliant Conflict

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

This movie takes a look at the iconic legend from two sides of her persona. Norma Jean Dougherty (Ashley Judd) is the ambitious small town girl and Marilyn Monroe (Mira Sorvino) is the construct after the plastic surgery. She had an unstable mother and an absent father. Her aunt left her in the orphanage after her uncle made a pass. In Hollywood, the married model Norma Jean dates actor Eddie Jordan (Josh Charles) and uses his connections. She vows to be the biggest star ever. Despite the good news of her divorce, she is angrily jealous of Eddie signing a studio contract. She's willing to sleep around including Eddie's uncle Ted to get ahead. Through Ted, she gets to big Hollywood agent Johnny Hyde (Ron Rifkin).This has the feel of an unauthorized sensationalized TV biopic. Ashley Judd is acting for all her worth in this one. She also gets really naked. It seems desperate. Norma Jean had a desperate drive and I can't separate the story from the sense of movie-making. Nevertheless, it probably has more reality than fiction. This is not some high brow affair despite the high brow concept of two actresses playing the same role. The concept functions well. Mira Sorvino does a fine Monroe imitation although it doesn't feel real. This does try to do a psychological conflict between the two personalities although I like more the Monroe as a smart calculating performer rather than a tragic mental case. Everybody wants the tragic flaw. In the end, this is a functional TV biopic but it seems to be trying too hard for my taste.

I've seen this movie 4 years ago and I loved it. The only thing I didn't like about it, was that they painted Marilyn as a s*ut and they included stuff that NEVER happened to her in real life. She WASN'T sexually abused by her foster father, she WASN'T stupid, she NEVER had a female doctor when she was in therapy, she NEVER hated being referred to by her real name (Norma Jean), and she NEVER lied around with various men who we don't have much knowledge of who knew Marilyn and were depicted in the film. Ahsley Judd does a wonderful job playing Norma Jean, BEFORE she become Marilyn. But her portrayal of Norma Jean AFTER Marilyn comes in is so tepid and cruel. Mira Sorvino does an amazing job portraying Marilyn, AFTER Norma Jean is gone. She shows Marilyn as the sexy blonde bombshell that she is, but shows her as an emotional wreck who was ALWAYS insecure and feeling like her career-referring to the end of the film-would never come back. I still love this movie and the only thing I wish was that they keep it as true as possible and NEVER included stuff that was unfounded and misconceived.

A horrible portrayal of the legendary Marilyn Monroe.If Marilyn Monroe was as dumb as this movie made her out to be, we wouldn't be celebrating her legacy as we are today. Marilyn Monroe was a brilliant woman who knew how to work the cameras. She had a heart and this movie made her cold and without a soul.Her death scene portrayed in this movie is inaccurate and ridiculous. She not die in an ambulance or in the bathroom and she did not drink down her pills. She took pills that have to be put through the rectum, not the mouth, and she was found by her maid face down on her bed naked in her bedroom with the telephone beside her.

I feel a need to defend this movie, at least against the charges that it doesn't present accurate characterizations of Marilyn Monroe. First of all, for someone to decide that Mira Sorvino plays Marilyn as an extension of her screen persona and not as she "really was" is specious at best. The way public figures behave off-camera isn't exactly something we as an audience can make a decision on. You don't know what happens behind those closed doors. That's why they're closed, so you can't see what's going on. But, really, that's beside the point. Whether or not Marilyn was truly like Sorvino plays her isn't really an issue. The surreal qualities of Norma Jean & Marilyn give ample indication that the filmmakers had no intention to go out and make a straightforward biopic. What they have in mind here is more complex. As heavy-handed as it may be, the symbolism is the real focus of the movie. Marilyn Monroe had two identities, and Sorvino and Ashley Judd go to great pains to illustrate in no uncertain terms that these two identities were in conflict with one another. The very different characterizations aren't saying that Marilyn was two different people. They are simply a case of filmmakers taking dramatic license to exaggerate something for the sake of making it clearer: Norma Jean Dougherty reinvented herself in her mind as someone who could get what she couldn't get herself. Try not to think of this film as a study of Monroe's outward change from Norma Jean to Marilyn. Think of it as more of a look inside her head, as an analysis of all the motives and frustrations bouncing around in her mind, and ultimately serving to identify her more than any physical appearances could ever do. It doesn't matter whether or not she really saw the word "Bourbon" and read it as "Bonbon." As the film lays it out, this is her image of herself, and in reflex, everyone else's image of her.And then there are those who will complain that it isn't right to speculate on someone's image of herself. But you can't ask a film to stick completely to facts. Conjecture is what makes nonfiction interesting. And it is what makes Norma Jean & Marilyn interesting.On the acting and in response to those who see the film as "soapy" and "campy": Life is a soap opera. Most of us are able to keep that at bay and live life as a perfectly reasonable chain of events. But desperate people historically are not able to do that. Drama is what they have, and drama is how they can get results. Marilyn, as the film puts it (and remember, you need to always look at a film like this on its own merits, especially when it doesn't portray itself as factual, which this one emphatically does not) is one of these desperate people, and the script respects that as a mean to that untimely end. Mira Sorvino's performance understands this. Yes, it's pretty wooden at first, but by the time she sings Happy Birthday to President Kennedy, hopped up on her crutch of barbituates and alcohol, her Marilyn has become fully realized in the downward spiral that will eventually take her life. Coupled with Ashley Judd's commanding performance as the girl who can only get what she wants by becoming someone else, and Sorvino's performance makes a full, tragic character, keeping to that perception of Marilyn Monroe as the eternal blonde bombshell legend.