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About Films By Year My 100 Favorites Features

Seeking out the

5000 greatest films

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My Week with Marilyn

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Directed by Simon Curtis
Produced by David Parfitt and Harvey Weinstein
Screenplay by Adrian Hodges Based on the books My Week with Marilyn and The Prince, the Showgirl and Me by Colin Clark
With: Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Julia Ormond, Kenneth Branagh, Pip Torrens, Geraldine Somerville, Michael Kitchen, Miranda Raison, Karl Moffatt, Simon Russell Beale, Toby Jones, Robert Portal, Philip Jackson, Jim Carter, Victor McGuire, Dougray Scott, Judi Dench, Zoë Wanamaker, Derek Jacobi, and Emma Watson
Cinematography: Ben Smithard
Editing: Adam Recht
Music: Conrad Pope
Runtime: 99 min
Release Date: 23 December 2011
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1
Color: Color
Film versions of the oft-told tales of Hollywood’s golden age are always risky; those gossipy stories are usually better left to the oral tradition.  That's the case with this fictionalized version of Colin Clark’s autobiographical accounts of spending time with Marilyn Monroe on the set of the minor Lawrence Olivier film, The Prince and the Showgirl.  While screenwriter Adrian Hodges creates a somewhat effective brief encounter structure for the film, director Simon Curtis achieves no authenticity in his depiction of these well-known personalities.  The whole picture feels like actors dressing up as their idols, recreating behaviors and anecdotes that fail to add up to a story.  A movie like this lives and dies by its lead and while Michelle Williams is passable as Monroe, her performance doesn't convey what was so special about this extraordinary woman to anyone not already familiar with her.  The film follows suit, failing to make a case for why Monroe’s unprofessional behavior was worth putting up with, or why the events surrounding the making of this forgettable picture merit their own telling.  For a much better example of a fictional brief encounter story set during a legendary era in show business, see Richard Linklater’s 2008 Me and Orson Welles
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