The most devastating withering amusing response so far to this morning’s My Week With Marilyn press screening wasn’t Eric Kohn’s Indiewire pan, but a tweet by Jamie Christley: “If The King’s Speech bugged you, steer clear of My Week With Marilyn. But if you live on the Upper West Side and only take cabs, you’ll love it.”
Kohn has called this Weinstein Co. release “exactly the type of tolerably superficial crowd-pleaser that it looks like. Like Richard Linlater’s Me and Orson Welles, it studies classic Hollywood yore from the perspective of a little known crew member. However, My Week With Marilyn lacks the same focused wit.
“Lacking the meaty role she may have hoped for, Michelle Williams delivers an airy interpretation of Marilyn Monroe without digging too deep into the persona. Her one-note performance matches a movie less invested in the reality of the material than style of it, not pulling back the veil on Monroe but smothering it to death with the familiar polish of a tame show business comedy.
“My Week With Marilyn is bound to land mixed reviews but has enough commercial potential to give it legs for Oscar campaign based around Williams’ performance,” Kohn concldues. “However, neither the material nor the role are consequential enough to secure her a victory.”
Keep in mind that Kohn was snippy about Midnight in Paris, and look where that went.
