Norma Jean and Marilyn (1996)

★½
I admit that I know very little of the life of Marilyn Monroe. Nonetheless, I think I can safely say that Norma Jean and Marilyn does her little justice. The movie doesn't go wrong in the acting or the directing, but in the material itself. Jill Isaacs's screenplay gives us a Marilyn Monroe who was pathetic and stupid. There's no hint of the legendary actress at her best. We see no indication that she was talented. Instead, we see a loser who slept her way to the top and trampled on everyone who got in her way.

I don't know how much of the film is true. For all I know, everything that happened here happened. That's beside the point. Norma Jean and Marilyn tells the story of Norma Jean Baker (who changed her name to Marilyn Monroe), a poor girl from a dysfunctional family. She was abused as a child and her married life was nil. We witness her rise to fame and her eventual decline due to drug addiction. The problem here is that we never see Marilyn displaying any talent or determination to succeed in her craft. What we do see are 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.

Ashley Judd plays Norma Jean, and we observe her early life with a husband she rarely sees. She dreams of becoming a star, but her looks and her name prevent her from attaining star status. After subjecting herself to plastic surgery, Norma Jean is no more, and Marilyn Monroe (Mira Sorvino) emerges. Well, that's not quite true. Marilyn is haunted by visions of Norma. Norma urges Marilyn to press forward and make decisions that ruin her life. This erratic behavior is what ultimately destroyed Marilyn.

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, then the story might have worked. Instead, the movie is a series of endless rants against those close to her, and that eventually wears us down. There is one faithful friend. Eddie Jordan (Josh Charles) is the only person who puts up with Monroe's attitude. Everyone else has to suffer from her company. Episodes with Joe DiMaggio (Peter Dobson) and Arthur Miller (David Dukes) come and go, and all that's left is Monroe and her nasty alter ego.

Ashley Judd not only gives one of her best performances, but one of her bravest. She's a thorn in the side of Monroe in nearly every scene. This movie would complement Normal Life in a double feature about dysfunctional Ashley Judd characters (toss in Bug for a triple feature). Together, Judd and Sorvino make a good team tackling the two sides of this complex person, but Norma Jean and Marilyn made a simple mistake—it didn't include enough scenes of her talent. There is one musical number, "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," that I liked, and I wanted more scenes like that. We don't get them, and the result is that this H.B.O. movie falls short of expectations.

© 2001, 2002 Silver Screen Reviews