The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Actresses have been attempting to play the real Marilyn Monroe since Norma Jeane Mortenson first tried in the late 1940s. Kelli Garner contributes a fine impersonation to this adaptation of J Randy Taraborrelli's gossipy 2009 biography, which is showing here in a feature version missing an hour from a two-part mini-series. Yet, while all the familiar anecdotes are capably retold by screenwriter Stephen Kronish and director Laurie Collyer - as the 30-something Monroe opens up to psychiatrist Alan DeShields (Jack Noseworthy) - they offer few genuine insights into Monroe's fraught relationship with her paranoid schizophrenic mother, Gladys (Susan Sarandon), or with the men she trusted to protect her: first husband Jimmy Dougherty (Giacomo Gianniotti), agent Johnny Hyde (Tony Nardi), baseball legend Joe DiMaggio (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and playwright Arthur Miller (Stephen Bogaert). It's intriguing watching Sarandon's daughter, Eva Amurri Martino, essaying the young Gladys, while Emily Watson excels as foster mother, Grace Goddard. But too many facts have been simplified for dramatic purposes.