My Week With Marilyn

[calimac]

Somehow the reviews had given me the impression this movie was a comedy. It isn't. It's a romance, in the contemporary sense of the word, and a surprisingly chaste one. But it's not appropriate as a date movie. The hero is 23 and gawky, and the proper audience for this movie is gawky 23 year old single males with a romantic bent who are feeling sorry for themselves. That would have been me, back in the day.

My mental muscles for putting myself back in that mindset are both rusty and painful to exercise, but it was the only way I could make any emotional sense out of this movie at all. In addition to being a bit of an emotional vampire, Marilyn Monroe is not my style, neither in personality nor in looks. But if I'd been 23 and she'd turned her sensual eyes on me like that, I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to resist any more than this guy did. Ouch.

Comments

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

The only thing about this movie that interested me at all was Michelle Williams, but that wasn't enough to get me to watch it. Monroe has never been my style, even when I was 23. Now Grace Kelly, on the other hand ...

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

As I said, Monroe wasn't my style either. I didn't go to see this movie either for Michelle Williams or who she was playing. I went because I was expecting a comedy about the personality clash between Marilyn and Sir Larry. In that, it was rather disappointing.

The actress of that era whose looks made my heart go pitter was Elizabeth Taylor, though most of the movies I've seen her in were terrible. By contrast, at least I liked Some Like It Hot, which might well be the only Monroe picture I've seen, though I wasn't too impressed by her in it.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Some Like It Hot is good. I've heard good things about Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, too, which I will no doubt see eventually. She's good in a supporting role in Clash by Night, which is not one of my favorite Fritz Lang films. Actually, come to think of it, I also like her small role in The Asphalt Jungle. So I guess I like her as an actress; she just doesn't get me hot and bothered.