Anna Nicole (2013)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Good movie but grossly overrated

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Blistering performances.

This is a well made sympathetic and thorough biopic. It's often hilarious, touching, bizarre and tragic as only the crazy life of Anna Nicole could be. Lifetime did a good job putting together the stranger than fiction life story showing the audience what they needed to see without being overly exploitative.The cast performs well. Agnes Bruckner doesn't look that much like Anna, she is a bit more intelligent looking and not so bombshell like but she acts well and she evokes sympathy for the character. Virginia Madsen as Anna's mother is good. Martin Landau is terrific as Howard Marshall. He really acts like a frail elderly man smitten.Could have shown a bit about the paternity battle for Anna's daughter at the end.

What a difference a chance encounter can make! When Anna Nicole Smith says "hello, handsome" to an 86-year-old Texas billionaire who visits the strip club where she gyrated, she sets in motion an exhilarating ascent and dizzying plummet to despair and death.Smith loved the seeming adoration that always eluded her growing up but when it demanded too much from her -- as in posing nude for Playboy -- she became hopelessly addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs.Not only is Agnes Bruckner a dead-ringer for the platinum-blonde bombshell but she creates a very convincing portrait of a woman who never lied to J. Howard Marshall ("Paw-paw) or promised to be monogamous. Either someone was terrific at makeup and prosthetics, or the role called for Bruckner to gain a huge amount of weight. Either way we watch in a kind of horror as we observe Anna's descent into self-destruction and debauchery. Martin Landau is surprisingly endearing as the magnate charmed by his "lady love" and last chance at affection, if only of the platonic sort."The woman has given me a reason to keep breathing!" he exults to his son, played with icy conviction by Cary Elwes.The wheelchair-bound Marshall is instantly smitten by Anna, but depicted as lucid when he seemingly adopts and then weds Anna -- but not necessarily all-there when he agrees, close to his end, to cede all financial control over his fortune to his son.Also turning in a powerful performance is Graham Patrick Martin as the child Anna had while still a teenager. Anna and Danny grew up together and he seems to take on a fatherly role toward the end of the story.While Anna's devoted lawyer, Howard K. Stern, is depicted here as a socially insecure man with seemingly nothing else going on in his life, photographer Larry Birkhead is given even less examination. We learn nothing about Anna's reported/apparent decision to exclude him from any role involving the daughter he fathers in her last year of life. Such quibbles don't add up to much in a solidly satisfying production that will deepen viewers' understanding of a compellingly tragic personality.

TV biopics rarely have the sort of depth that a feature has. I was looking forward to this one because I've always admired and enjoyed Director Mary Harron's work. But not even a really good cast and director could make this film any deeper than its subject matter. In all fairness, there wasn't that much to say without speculating -- which wasn't really the purpose of the film.Fresh on the heels of the amazing HBO documentary called "Love, Marilyn," I was anxious to see how Anna Nicole's story would unfold, given that Marilyn Monroe was such an obvious inspiration for Anna Nicole. Certainly, if anyone in this century embodied sex appeal in some of the same ways as Marilyn, it would be Anna. However, unlike Marilyn - there was really never any attempt apparent that she took acting very seriously as Marilyn did. I'd be interested to know how much Lifetime producers may have interfered with the production of Anna Nicole because that would be a sure indicator of a less than stellar production to follow.I wasn't expecting all that much, given the subject matter - but I was at least expecting a more enlightening rendering of it. It's not bad enough not to see -- but it was nothing that merits seeing again, for sure.

Anna Nicole (2013) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Made-for-TV movie from Lifetime about the life of Anna Nicole Smith (Agnes Bruckner) who we see as a young single mother to her marriage to billionaire J. Howard Marshall (Martin Landau) and of course through her troubled drug use. ANNA NICOLE is nicely directed by Mary Harron and it features some good performances but in the end there are just way too many problems for it to work as well as it needed to. For starters, the film seems pretty rushed trying to fit all of Smith's story into a 90-minute running time as we bounce around quite a bit and the film never really seems to focus on anything. Another problem are a few gimmicks that are used throughout the picture including a really silly one where the young Smith sees a "future" version of herself. At the same time, the older Smith seeing a "younger" version of herself has no impact either. I'd also say that the movie doesn't work with the silly narration, which is coming from the dead Smith looking back over her life. With that said, Bruckner does a nice job in the lead role even though she never really looks or acts like the real person. For the most part I thought she did a good job at showing a troubled person. Landau easily steals the picture as the elderly man who falls in love with the stripper he meets and Cary Elwes is also good as his son. Adam Goldberg does a nice job in the role of Howard K. Stern and Virginia Madsen is good as Smith's mother, although the screenplay really doesn't do many favors for the character. Harron does a nice job at keeping the film moving at a good pace but there's just too many issues with the screenplay for this to be a complete winner. It also doesn't help that Smith isn't all that sympathetic. Still, for a made-for-TV film this here isn't too bad as a quick time killer.