My Week with Marilyn (2011) Review

Director: Simon Curtis
Writer: Adrian Hodges
Genre: Drama


1.5 Cookies
Glass of milk - Michelle Williams

            My Week With Marilyn is a period piece, set in England, with an Oscar nominated actor playing a famous historical figure. No, it’s not “The King’s Speech part 2,” but it’s pretty obvious that producer Harvey Weinstein is retracting old formulas, and hoping for similar results. Well, Michelle Williams gives a fantastic performance as Marilyn Monroe, just as Colin Firth gave a brilliant performance as King George VI, but as a whole My Week With Marilyn doesn’t even come close to The King’s Speech. In fact, My Week with Marilyn isn’t very good at all; dare I say it’s actually pretty bad.

            The main character of this film is actually not Marilyn, but Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), the son of a wealthy art historian who wants to go into the film industry. Colin lands a job as third assistant director on Laurence Oliver’s (Kenneth Branagh) new film The Prince and the Showgirl starring Marilyn Monroe. Soon, Colin gets to know Marilyn quite well, who has recently married Arthur Miller, and develops feelings for her. Marilyn, who is described as “the finest piece of ass on the planet,” by a reporter played by Toby Jones flirts with Colin and they end up skinny-dipping together in a lake, where they kiss.

            The movie is based on the memoirs of Colin Clark, who claims to have gotten to know the real woman behind the “character” of Marilyn Monroe. The amount of truth in Clark’s memoirs, and in the movie is questionable, but the main problem in the film is that while it strives to go deep into the mind of the real Marilyn Monroe, it stays disappointingly shallow. Williams does her best at making Marilyn feel real, but Adrian Hodges’ flimsy screenplay and Simon Curtis’ cursory direction leave the audience with no insight into who Marilyn really was other than that she was hot, a tease, selfish, and depressed.

            Eddie Redmayne gives a lackluster performance as Colin Clark and I was annoyed basically every time he was on screen. Kenneth Branagh, in a performance generating a considerable amount of Oscar buzz, is trying really hard to impersonate Laurence Oliver but in the end falls short. Judi Dench does what she can with a small, basically throwaway role as an actor in The Prince and the Showgirl. And Emma Watson is absolutely awful as a costume girl who Colin goes on a date with in a very poorly contrived and weakly executed subplot.

            While this may have been the most exciting week of Colin Clark’s life, it was really an inconsequential week for Marilyn Monroe and it’s disappointing that the acting of Michelle Williams is wasted in what I wish was a much larger and insightful story about who Marilyn really was. There are a few chuckles along the way and it breezes by easily enough at a mostly painless 99 minutes, but My Week With Marilyn misses the mark big time. Williams will almost certainly score an Oscar nomination for Best Female Actor, but she is really the only legitimate reason to spend your money on this film.