'My Week With Marilyn': A vulnerable, credible Monroe 2½ stars

Watching “My Week With Marilyn” is much like seeing a real, lengthy-lost Marilyn Monroe film: It’s not too great, however the star is enchanting.

Michelle Williams conveys this mixture of canny manipulation and desperate insecurity that defined Monroe, running smoothly past the apparent mimicry that the lesser actress would depend on.

The nearest comparison is Cate Blanchett’s portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in “The Aviator” — neither actress looks similar to her subject, but she becomes her nevertheless. It’s no surprise Williams is really a leading contender for any best actress Oscar.

The film adjusts the memories of Colin Clark, a youthful crew member around the group of Laurence Olivier’s “The Prince and also the Showgirl,” that Monroe traveled to England in 1956. The troubled superstar clashed immediately using the short-tempered Shakespearean, a fight Clark observed close up. Luckily, he stored a diary.

“My Week With Marilyn” introduces him being an eager 23-year-old (performed by Eddie Redmayne) who strongly pushes his distance to Olivier’s company. He’s essentially a glorified gofer, until he bakes an unpredicted reference to Monroe.

Colin is really as smitten together with her as everybody is, but he goodies her like a person, something nobody else appears able to (or thinking about). Through the finish of the short relationship, Colin is becoming part counselor, part boyfriend and part personal assistant, giving her the courage to complete the project and impressing the frustrated Olivier (Kenneth Branagh).

Like many movies about legendary figures, “My Week With Marilyn” slips into hagiography — but this time around, it’s not the star who eventually ends up idealized. Colin is virtually a saint within this story, relentlessly safeguarding the fragile actress in the lots of people who mistreat her.

Although it’s certainly credible that Clark looked after Monroe and offered genuine friendship, he’s somewhat an excessive amount of the non selfish hero here. I don’t determine if exactly the same tone pervades his memoirs (Clark died in 2002, so he is able to’t comment personally), but director Simon Curtis and film writer Adrian Hodges might have deepened the smoothness for that fictionalized version.

An identical problem affects another gamers. All of the stars (including Judi Dench, Dougray Scott and Emma Watson) are fine, and Curtis captures the nervous tempos of the movie set nicely. There’s simply not much happening underneath the surface. Branagh, particularly, tries mightily to nail lower the elusive Olivier persona, but he’s simply miscast. You won't ever forget whom you’re really watching.

That's undoubtedly not the situation with Williams.

(In the Mainstreet, Rio and Town Center.)

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Subscribe ow.ly Facebook ow.ly Twitter ow.ly Release Date: 4 November 2011 Genre: Drama Cast: Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh Company directors: Simon Curtis Studio: The Weinstein Company Plot: Colin Clark, an worker of Mister Laurence Olivier's, documents the tense interaction between Olivier and Marilyn Monroe throughout manufacture of The Prince and also the Showgirl.