Colin Clark, an employee of Sir Laurence Olivier's, documents the tense interaction between Olivier and Marilyn Monroe during production of The Prince and the Showgirl.
At moments hilarious and others touching, it’s a sweet, slight affair, more pretty pageant than pithy biographical drama. Expect awards nominations to stack up for Williams and Branagh.
It’s all terribly luvvy and hammier than a ham sandwich at times, but it’s sweet, funny and sad all the same.
My Week With Marilyn is light fare: it doesn't pretend to offer any great insight, but it offers a great deal of pleasure and fun, and an unpretentious homage to a terrible British movie that somehow, behind the scenes, generated very tender almost-love story.
Once the tingles wear off, little food for thought.
Williams is being touted for an Oscar for this, and she may well win one. But she’s done better work elsewhere, and so has everyone else.
A magical 100 minutes.
The character acting here is of a very high standard.
While the film pays lip service to the blonde bombshell’s fragile psyche, we never get close to psychological insight.
Crisply directed by Simon Curtis, from a well-written screenplay brimming with one-liners by Adrian Hodges, this is a lively, beguiling and classy British production.
There is a real feeling for British cinema in its moderately prosperous, constantly crisis-dogged, ever-aspiring days in the 1950s, the period detail seems right, Kenneth Branagh's Olivier is just this side of caricature, Judi Dench is a moving, gracious Sybil Thorndike; there's a celebrated thespian in virtually every role. Michelle Williams is sensationally good as the wilful, brilliantly gifted, deeply disturbed Monroe.
It's understandable that the screenplay should have attracted such a stellar cast. Adrian Hodges has written a terrific farce, with so many clashes between generations and cultures that Pinewood starts to resemble a dodgems track.
A treat for film buffs that’s sure to be a heavy-hitter this awards season, Marilyn could end up earning its subject the Oscar she never won during her too-short life.
Branagh is good value as the priggish Olivier, and though Williams does the best job possible of embodying Monroe, the film has no confidence in her ability to do so, surrounding her instead with characters who prattle on about how special she is rather than conveying that fact cinematically.
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Helen Seamons, Jo Jones and Sara Ilyas, The Guardian, 15/11/2011
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General release. Check local listings for show times.