Watch The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe For Free

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

To me, this movie is perfection.

Good concept, poorly executed.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

I enjoyed this mostly for the stellar supporting performances by Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a much-sexier-than-real-life Joe DiMaggio, Stephen Bogaert as Arthur Miller, Tamara Hickey as Pat Kennedy Lawford and Susan Sarandon as Marilyn's mother, Gladys. They all made what is basically a run-of-the-mill Lifetime movie worthwhile. Kelli Garner, in the main role as Marilyn Monroe, gives a breathy impression of Marilyn's famous speaking voice, but not much else. She never really conveys the conflict and pain of being Marilyn. It's like she's doing a celebrity impression instead of really becoming the character.I know that it was made for basic cable and so they couldn't show much during the sex scenes, but it is particularly laughable when Marilyn and Joe DiMaggio are supposed to be having hot sex on a hotel bed but she leaves on her very visible granny panties and he doesn't even pull down his trousers, resulting in Morgan lying on top of Garner fully clothed while they grunt away. Surely the director could have found some way to make it look plausible that they might actually be having sex without offending the network censors.

Over the years, there have been countless movies about screen icon, Marilyn Monroe, so I was not really all that excited about getting to see this latest one- a Lifetime TV mini-series, that is- until I heard Kelli Garner was starring in the lead. I've seen her in several things over the years, and remember thinking- long before this movie- that, even though she doesn't really resemble Marilyn, she still has that similar spirit; especially in a little movie I saw her in years ago called "DreamLand".Now this movie doesn't really give us anything new about Ms. Monroe; in fact, pretty much re-hashes what we all have seen over and over again in the movies released about her in the past few decades. And BTW- I would say my favs. over the years have been "Blonde", which featured Poppy Montgomery in the lead, and the wonderful experimental HBO film, "Normal Jean & Marilyn", which featured Mira Sorvino & Ashley Judd in the dual personas. I saw the last one, "My Week with Marilyn", a few years ago- which was probably the one which featured the highest production values of all of them. It's funny, overall I liked that film better than this new Lifetime film, but I like Kelli Garner better in the role than Michelle Williams. There are shots in this film, especially while she is making "Seven Year Itch", where she was just the spitting image- I had to do a double take!But I will give this a marginal recommendation- only for Garner's performance. Jeffrey Dean Morgan (as Joe DiMaggio), Emily Watts, Jack Noseworthy, and Oscar winner Susan Sarandon (as Marilyn/Norma Jean's mother) co-star.

MM is a tough subject, clouded by 50 years of conjecture, misinformation and the subject's own spin and inconsistency.That said, after 50 years of tireless reading and watching every foot of available film concerning MM, this is the first commentary worth viewing and rumination. There is something uncanny about Ms. Garner's portrayal and it matters little whether or not she looks like MM or not. No one will ever 'look' like Monroe anymore than anyone will 'look' like Abe Lincoln. She had the depth of character, the attitude, the walk and most importantly, the vocal cadence. Emily Watson and Susan Sarandon steal the show as they would wont to do in a project of this nature. However, Garner holds her own.Robert Mitchum said it best about his friend and coworker when he said that Marilyn's biggest mistake was that she "burlesqued it", and burlesque was a slippery slope in Hollywood at that time. Monroe played burlesque so well, people believed it. Unfortunately MM was probably not equipped to withstand the foul misogyny that went along with post war attitudes toward any woman who was not properly corseted and house dressed, into submission. If MM wouldn't have conjured the wherewithal to crack the studio system in 1950, she'd have ended up a depressed and divorced house wife in the Valley, with a mentally ill mother to support. For those of us who have dealt with mental illness in the family, this show is treading on new ground. That is the zeitgeist that Garner and Sarandon nail. MM was a fish out of water, which is the reason why we are all mesmerized to this day. For better or for worse she was her own woman, with no peer, before or since.It is also worth mentioning that the costumes, makeup and set designs are spot on. The dreamy and disconcerting saturated colors and Noir lighting become good compliments to the spirit of the production and add good tension.Kudos to Garner who did her homework and made this old MM aficionado squirm in his seat a few times, for all of the right reasons. DiMaggio probably said it best, by saying nothing and letting his actions do the talking. Not perfect but well worth taking in, and a huge step forward from the usual Lifetime tripe.

I have to agree with the previous reviewer, jlthornb51. This production was shoddy and a great waste of my time. I kept hoping it would get better, but it seemed to get worse and worse. No offense to Kelli Garner, but much of the fault seems to lie with her "terrible imitation of MM's iconic voice" as jlthornb51 put it, along with her lack of acting skills. Any potential was ruined by the poor casting of Kelli Garner coupled with her much too superficial performance. Susan Sarandon's role seemed a little bit overplayed, but not terrible. Emily Watson gave a decent performance which had to be difficult to pull off, given all the other deficiencies she faced from the script to being forced to play against depthless performances of the other actors. Kudos to Emily Watson for pulling off a positive performance in the face of the otherwise boring overplayed production. Kelli Garner's superficial acting was almost like a caricature of MM, ruining the entire mini-series.