My Week with Marilyn

Based on a pair of autobiographical books, My Week with Marilyn follows eager film student Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) as he lands a job with Laurence Olivier’s (Kenneth Branagh) production company and is subsequently sent to work on the set of Branagh’s latest film, The Prince and the Showgirl – with the film primarily detailing the friendship that eventually ensues between Clark and temperamental star Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams). There’s little doubt that My Week with Marilyn fares best in its opening half hour, as filmmaker Simon Curtis, working from Adrian Hodges’ screenplay, offers up a brisk and lighthearted first act revolving around Clark’s fish-out-of-water exploits on the set of Olivier’s film – with the inherently engrossing nature of these scenes heightened by the efforts of a uniformly superb cast. (In addition to Branagh and Williams’ strong work, My Week with Marilyn boasts stellar supporting performances from folks like Toby Jones, Judi Dench, and Dominic Cooper.) It’s only as the movie begins to morph into a deliberately-paced melodrama that one’s interest begins to flag, with the pronounced emphasis on Clark and Monroe’s decidedly underwhelming escapades contributing heavily to the increasingly stagnant atmosphere. (It doesn’t help, either, that Clark, for the most part, comes off as a one-dimensional figure whose wide-eyed enthusiasm remains his only distinguishing characteristic.) The egregiously lackadaisical vibe ensures that the novelty of the premise slowly-but-surely wears off, which ultimately does render My Week with Marilyn‘s more overtly positive attributes moot and cements the picture’s place as a well-intentioned yet dramatically inert piece of work.

** out of ****