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Re: Goodbye, Norma Jean (1976)
| | Added by Bill (email) on 2004-08-08 19:30:33 |
Maybe Marilyn Monroe's life can't be filmed. Talented actresses Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino tried it in "Norma Jean & Marilyn," (** out of 4) but with lackluster results. That movie wasn't as bad as this movie wounds.
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Re: Goodbye, Norma Jean (1976)
| | Added by Bill (email) on 2004-08-08 19:31:17 |
I meant "sounds" not "wounds"
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Re: Goodbye, Norma Jean (1976)
| | Added by Jake on 2004-08-09 00:20:03 |
I heard 'Norma Jean and Marilyn' wasn't bad, but I haven't seen it yet. At any rate, though, there are so many failed biographies of Monroe that they form their own category in bad movie history. If there's one worse than this, though...well, that's pretty much unimaginable.
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Re: Goodbye, Norma Jean (1976)
| | Added by Jake on 2004-08-09 00:20:29 |
P.S. It wounds, all right.
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Re: Goodbye, Norma Jean (1976)
| | Added by John Ulmer on 2004-08-10 11:49:46 |
Great review, Jake. This movie is indeed complete trash.
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Re: Goodbye, Norma Jean (1976)
| | Added by Jake Cremins on 2004-08-12 04:55:15 |
The worst part is that I own the DVD. It was a gift, but one I had been clamoring for. Well, ask for a bad movie and you get it tenfold, I guess.
Anyway, as offensive most exploitation films are, I still can't help loving their spirit, in theory--as soon as I saw the cover image Madacy had created for the DVD, I laughed in delight at the sheer ballsiness involved in designing it that way. If you don't know what I mean, look at the cover art for any two or three titles in the "Marilyn Monroe Collection," and then look at this one again. It's delightfully shameless.
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Re: Goodbye, Norma Jean (1976)
| | Added by Jake on 2005-09-20 00:45:46 |
Finally saw 'Norma Jean and Marilyn,' and I thought it was terrific (as long as we're giving brief ratings, ***1/2 out of four). A movie using a screenwriting gimmick like that would really have to work to make it pay off, and as far as I'm concerned, it paid off. So now I add, see 'Norma Jean and Marilyn' if you're interested, and let 'Goodbye, Norma Jean' grow a nice thick layer of dust in your local video store.
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Re: Goodbye, Norma Jean (1976)
| | Added by Bill on 2005-10-01 03:22:08 |
Glad you liked NJ&M. Here are a few excerpts from my full review that explain my position:
[...]
The problem here is that we never see Marilyn displaying any talent or determination in her craft. We see her arguing with producers, being late for work, mixing drugs with alcohol and alienating her husbands. As a result, we can't sympathize with her death at a young age.
[...]
Marilyn made everyone around her miserable. It works too well, because the audience becomes alienated from her plight. Instead of understanding her mental illness, we scorn her. If we actually got to see what made Monroe a sought-after talent in the first place, the story would have worked. Her endless rants against those close to her eventually wear us down.
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Re: Goodbye, Norma Jean (1976)
| | Added by Jake on 2005-10-03 05:12:22 |
I can see that first about not spending any time showing her acting, but that worked for me; it was enough for the movie to remind me that these films existed, instead of spending a lot of time showing them being recreated. I got the impression that we were being asked to fill in that particular blank, while the story filled in the rest of the blanks about her private life. Of course, this means the movie has problems if you're not really familiar with/interested in Marilyn Monroe movies already.
As for the alienation, I guess it's a matter of taste. For me, the idea that she was kind of repellent in person was a new and surprising one; hearing that she was "troubled" from afar makes you feel all warm and sympathetic, but really seeing it is something else altogether. I admired the movie for giving us reasons why she was the way she was, but without making her any more tolerable to be around. (Of course, this doesn't make her any more tolerable to be around, ha ha.)
P.S. Plus, realizing what the flashbacks in 'Goodbye, Norma Jean' were about was kind of gratifying. I didn't mention them in the review because, despite trying to cover as much ground as the actual childhood scenes in this movie, they last literally about fifteen seconds altogether. My favorite is the one where we see a lone shot of her mother, as someone offscreen yells in Echoing Flashback Voice, "She's CRAZY!"
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