10 Reasons Why Blonde is Bad & So Laughably Atrocious | Movie Review

I didn’t approach the movie Blonde expecting to learn Marilyn Monroe’s life story nor was I expecting an at least semi-accurate Marilyn Monroe biopic. I approached Blonde like any other movie, looking to answer this simple question: Is this telling me a story worthy of my time? Regarding this film, I cannot emphasize the answer to that question enough, ***ABSOLUTELY NOT.*** 

Blonde is bad.

And honestly, the word “bad” does not even begin to describe the atrocity that is the movie Blonde.

Other critiques of this film have focused on the victim-like portrayal of Marilyn Monroe or the anti-abortion rhetoric. Why is no one talking about how terribly cheap and amateur this film looked, the cringingly unnatural dumpster fire of a script, or the excruciatingly stagnant pacing?

I don’t think I’ve hated a film more in my life actually. I loathe this sorry excuse for a film.

You take almost 3 hours of my life to tell me absolutely nothing. Several scenes added nothing to the frayed, attention-deficient storyline. Blonde prided itself on wasting viewers’ time. 

Blonde is a fictional biopic that explores the life of the infamous American icon, Marilyn Monroe. 

I’m going to be honest with you, there is no way to spoil a film that is already delivered way past its expiration date. I will save you the trouble of watching the film and just include details you wouldn’t know unless you see the movie. Some people call it spoilers, I call it mercy. I wouldn’t recommend that anyone watch this film. I beg of you, spare yourself the misery. 

I can’t even begin to sit here and list off the many many many incorrect artistic choices that this film made and yes, I thought art was subjective but this film taught me that some art choices can simply be the wrong ones. 

10 Artistic Choices That Were Plain Wrong | Blonde Review

1. Not giving the crazy mother a conclusion.

This film begins with Norma Jean (AKA: Marilyn Monroe before she was famous) as a child. We see her mother make senseless choices that we can brush off since we get confirmation that she’s clinically crazy.

I even forgave the choppy script for a moment because I thought the loony mom believed she was the lover of a duke in the 1600s or something like that. 

We see the mother abuse Norma Jean shortly before Norma is put into an orphanage and her mom in a mental hospital. 

An abrupt time jump in the plot then shows Norma as a young adult, starting off her career as Marilyn Monroe and visiting her mother who’s still in the hospital, catatonic and delusional. 

Marilyn visits her mother who was such a staple in her unstable development, once or twice more in her adulthood, and then we hear NOTHING of the mother again for the rest of the film. 

Talk about loose ends. 

For the rest of the film, the neglect of the mother’s influence on Monroe’s life is dangerously overcompensated with the word “daddy” more times than you ever need to hear in your life.

2. Having Marilyn call every man in her life “daddy.” 

MAKE IT STOP!

Who okayed this script actually? Were they able to read? It should be illegal to have an adult character say “daddy” that many times without it being a stupid joke. Nothing felt more unnatural and demeaning to the character’s depth than that overused “Daddy” title she gave to nearly every man within 2 feet of her.

It made her so infantilized and actually made her look dumb. It was so disturbing. If I was a fan of Monroe or one of her relatives I would definitely feel offended by this debasing portrayal of her. 

Another sign of a bad script that was not questioned enough before putting the words into actors’ mouths is the overuse of Marilyn’s original name, “Norma Jean.” They said it so much that it contributed to the unnatural feel of the script. 

They did not say anyone else’s name as much as they said, Norma Jean. Another incorrect artistic choice. 

3. Not clarifying the confusing and intangible role of Marilyn’s father.

Monroe’s search for her father is an ongoing one throughout the movie but it’s hard to pinpoint why??

There’s no emotional depth or reasoning behind her obsession with a father figure. Perhaps the director wanted to attribute her promiscuous ways to “daddy issues.” If so, this correlation was dangerously underexplored and simplified to a point where it insults the complexity of the effects an absent father can have on a child. 

There are voiceovers of a father’s letters to his child. It’s hard to say whether these letters are real, whether Marilyn’s father existed or not, or whether it was all a figment of her imagination; an idea placed in her mind by her twisted mother; an idea she’s now unable to part with.

The “father” concept is just lazily thrown around in this movie. There is no measured thought or meaning behind it and if there is, I refuse to waste any more energy attempting to make abstract art of this clumsy mess.

4. Including the image of a talking fetus.

The inclusion of a 3D biological simulation of a fetus in the womb was bad enough — I was wondering who edited these video clips from my 6th-grade health class into what I thought was supposed to be an A-level movie — but somehow it gets even worse when they give the fetus dialogue in the script!?!!

I had to actually pause the movie because I was laughing so hard. Not the kind of laugh when you’re having a good time, the kind of laugh when you’re so confused, you don’t know how to feel.

“They can’t be serious,” I thought to myself. 

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Dialogue for the biology class simulation of an unborn fetus??? This is a new level of comedy I was not prepared for. I couldn’t believe how stupid that was! How incongruent it was from the “serious drama” tone the movie was giving before!

Whoever let that happen, again – that is the wrong artistic choice. We don’t give fetuses a voice unless we’re in a silly comedy film. If you want to say something serious, you say it in the voiceover of a human being that has already exited the womb. 

If people are scared that this “anti-abortion rhetoric” is gonna turn any tides then they definitely didn’t watch the movie til the end. In fact, after watching this film, I support the abortion of this film from my Netflix library.

And how can an anti-abortion movie come from a studio named Plan B Entertainment?? If this movie was plan B then they probably should have moved on to plan C. 

5. Being Rated NC-17

One of the aspects of this film that sparked intrigue was that it is the first NC-17 Netflix original film.

Blonde sets an awful precedent for the future of NC-17 films on Netflix. The “racy” moments within the film were unnecessary and added nothing to the story at all. I was literally like – why are our shirts off people? Have some manners.

There were other scenes of a sexual nature that didn’t feed the narrative at all. Those scene could’ve been cut and we’d be just as dissatisfied with the narrative.

This film was banking on sex selling and honestly, every moment of the film that had the potential to be steamy fell flat. Everything just felt so empty, abrupt, and soulless.

6. Including Parchment Paper Thin Romances

The best part of any romance is the tension. The build-up to the climax of passion. We don’t experience any of that at all and are all of a sudden faced with shallow figures of affection for Marilyn. 

Her threesome couple – What the heck was that? I was sorely uninvested in whatever the heck was going on there. I did not care to even understand what romantic dynamic this movie was going for. I don’t care what you’re trying to do here all I know is that it’s really not working. 

And then the abusive athlete husband who proposes out of nowhere after a date dryer than the Sahara, and then Marilyn says yes to the proposal??

At this point, I free myself from the notion that this film’s choices have to make any logical sense. 

Finally, we have the writer husband who’s not abusive but exploits Marilyn as his writing inspiration. They never talk about or address the exploitation. 

All in all, all three romances, actually all of the relationships that Marilyn had, were like a cup that can’t hold water. Absolutely substanceless. 

A truck could hit every single of the characters in this film and I wouldn’t bat an eye. 

Even Marilyn herself was annoying me. She can go with her breathy voice. Speak with your chest sweetheart. 

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7. Switching between Black & White & Color

Evidence of the film’s insecurity is its constant indecisiveness between being shot in black & white or being shot in color.

This film switched between a black & white palette and a color palette, not for any meaningful reason but because it simply did not know what it was trying to say.

Films often switch between black & white to color to symbolize a transition for the characters, an evolution of some sort, or even a shift in emotion or mood.

In this film, there was no identifiable reason for the shift. After the first few confusing color shifts, I stopped noticing when the color appeared or disappeared. Color grading, which often holds a lot of weight in establishing the mood of the setting, ended up becoming a negligible aspect of the film since it was handled so frivolously.

The lack of clear messaging and direction was also strikingly evident in the inconsistent camera choices, the strange and distorted editing choices, and the non-existent flow from one scene to the next. 

Blonde is a stranger to itself. It has no idea what it wants to be.

It’s not bipolar nor is it schizophrenic in tone otherwise there would have been a level of expectancy to the unpredictability. Instead, this film is simply incredibly insecure and unsure of itself.

8. Having excruciatingly s l o w dialogue and pacing

Oh my goodness, it was bad.

Before the next person in the conversation finally said something, I had already mentally moved on to what I’m going to eat for dinner. Or more likely, what temperature I planned to roast this film with for the scathing review I’m writing right now.

First off, it’s impossible to hold someone’s attention when the dialogue doesn’t make sense or sound human. But then you crank it up to hard mode and have each actor take at least 15 seconds to stare blankly off-camera before they respond to someone’s simple question.

If they shaved off all of the empty space between dialogue, this movie would have been done in under 2 hours.

Even beyond the dialogue, a lot of scenes overstayed their welcome.

The classic Marilyn Monroe moment with the white dress and the sewer air blowing up her coochie felt way too frickin long.

That’s the easiest way to lose the audience’s attention. Pick up the pace and include the essentials only. It’s like this film has no respect for people’s time. We’ve got other things to do. Give only what is important to the film’s central narrative and message and shave off the excess.

Because this film doesn’t have a central message, we’re given countless moments that hold nothing important.

9. Making Marilyn’s character so weak & shallow

In Blonde, Monroe is such a weak, spineless, infantile character. It was sad to see and hard to root for. It also came off very different from the image of Monroe that has been built up in the popular American media. 

Her image is very strong, very powerful, very confident, yet very feminine. She has a pull with men that gets her what she wants. However, in Blonde, all we see is weakness. All we see is dependence. She has no layers or depth. The only emotion you might feel towards her is pity. 

Even if the point of the movie is to say that Marilyn was really weak under her facade of power, if that was the case, which I highly doubt it is, then this movie did a terrible job at making the contrast between the weak & strong personalities within her.

There is a moment in the film where Norma Jean is conjuring up the spirit of Marilyn Monroe within her. Now, we’re thinking, is this a split personality thing? We know that Monroe has some of the same mental instability that her mother has and it grows as the movie progresses but still, we’ve not made a clear distinction between reality and fantasy for Monroe.

Her downfall is awfully abrupt after the second abortion yet, after such a rough childhood, why does she want a child so badly? It doesn’t make any sense. 

Marilyn as a character is just plain confusing. We can’t empathize with her when she cries. We can’t rage with her when she shouts. I can’t relate to her ways because her character holds no soul.

If I can cry for a character in a book, a character that I can’t physically see, how much more should I cry for a character in a film? I can’t feel the substance of Marilyn at all.

10. Casting Ana De Armas

Out of the 22 million budget that Wikipedia says this film has, 21.9 million must have gone to convincing Ana De Armas that this would be good for her career. 

I was appalled by how cheap and sophomoric the camera choices looked and the script felt. 

I kept wondering, “Why does this film feel super low-budget?”

It felt like an indie filmmaker trying to be deep. 

Obviously, Ana de Armas is a very beautiful woman and a very talented actress. I adored her in Knives Out. I know that she tried her darndest with this film, however, her natural Hispanic accent crept through her Marilyn facade. 

All I could see was Ana De Armas in a blonde wig. 

Honestly, watching this film, I kinda felt bad for Ana. This is not it. This film was not worth her physical vulnerability and failed in giving her character enough depth to explore the emotional and spiritual vulnerability that wins the big league awards. 

I feel like this film exploited Ana’s face, her beauty, and her body, and I really wish she didn’t agree to be associated with this trash script. 

Ana De Armas as Marilyn was a good choice for the film’s publicity but not its artistry. Armas was not consistently convincing as Monroe and is honestly too precious to have allowed herself to be associated with this garbage bin movie.

Unfortunately, no level of beauty or talent can make up for terrible direction and an embarrassingly amateur script. 

In Conclusion…

Ignorant and unfocused, Blonde wastes viewers’ time with disjointed scenes and pregnant pauses that birth dust, while giving us characters that have less depth than a puddle in the sun. Blonde is a conglomeration of poor artistic choices.

The writer and director of this film, Andrew Dominik, does not deserve this platform that Netflix has given him. I am convinced that he had no real artistic vision for this film but instead was just pulling fragmented ideas out of his behind. Next time I see his name on a project, best believe I’m running in the opposite direction.

Watching Blonde should be classified as a form of torture. It’s truly a painful watch that will make you regret your life choices. Honestly, I don’t know what people could ever like in a movie like this. It simply exploits Marilyn Monroe’s name, Ana De Armas’ beauty, and the excitement of a restricted movie. It’s not any good at all.

I don’t think I’ve ever rated a film this low before. Ever. 

Rating: 1/10

Are there more reasons to hate the movie Blonde? Or can you provide any reasons to hate it less? Let me know in the comments below!

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Peace, love, and lots of popcorn,

IMO