Anna Nicole, Lifetime’s latest original movie about the life of Anna Nicole Smith is one hot mess, just like the woman herself. And also like Anna, you just can’t turn away from this movie. Though there were parts of the movie, especially the scenes about her childhood that made me want to close my eyes. Thankfully it started to get ridiculous right away with little Vicki Lynn talking to hallucinations named Anna Nicole. Dear writers, there will be plenty of hallucinogenic years to come for Anna. Why invent some from when she was six? It got more campy and ridiculous every time you did it.
“I told you not to marry the fry cook at Krispy Karl’s Fried Chicken.” Now that right there is some Lifetime dialogue worthy of notice.
The female plastic surgeon asking her if she wants peaches, grapefruits or melons and then having Anna take out a bowling ball bag as an example has now taken us fully into the land of make-believe. She got melons, in the movie by the way.
Hilarious story line about her sugardaddy being dragged by force into the strip club when he really wanted to go to the country club.
“I don’t want to be taken care of.” ~Anna Nicole line in the movie just before moving in with her sugardaddy.
So the director (Mary Harron, Director of American Psycho, Big Love, Six Feet Under and the L Word) thinks snorting lines of coke while speeding in a car with the top down is possible? Okay then. Clearly she did not fully embrace the 1980s. Or she is just fucking with us. She has an Oxford education is an acclaimed director and is directing a Lifetime movie. I think she is just screwing with the huddled mass yearning to break free of Lifetime movies but too seriously addicted to do so. I’m on to you, Mary Harron. And yes, I get it, you got Martin Landau. So did BAPS.
More humorous writing liberties. Anna Nicole was nervous about taking it all off for Playboy. /giggles
Not so humorous the son having his father sign paperwork he was unable to read. I had two siblings out of five do that to my father when he was in rough shape.
Please tell me that this Amazing Grace scene is fiction.
The hallucination thing is really disturbing and annoying. And probably great directing or something among the film critic elite. For me it is just creepy.
Is it true she was diagnosed with Borderline Personality?
Although not dead ringers exactly, I knew Howard Stern and Larry Birkhead from their first seconds of their scenes.
I can’t believe they left out the clown face scene. Oh there it is. I didn’t recall her being pregnant during that. She was worse than Kim Biermann smoking while knocked up.
What’s the deal with the flashback to them playing in autumn leaves when he was a kid, and then suddenly she is dressed in winter clothes in the Bahamas or Bimini or wherever all this happened with the same leaves? Is this some fancypants director’s way of making it another of Anna’s hallucinations? Darling, this is Lifetime. We are not looking for subtle undertones and thematic bullshit. We are a bunch of old fat chicks watching some crappy tabloid shit made into and even worse movie. AND WE LIKE IT. Stop trying to cultivate us.
This production was a hot mess. This story could have used an extra hour because so much was left out. The events time lined from the mid 80’s – mid 90’s was all jumbled together and did not reflect the real time line of certain events. This movie was a chop shop of vignettes and felt incomplete & rushed.
What was up with those child hood hallucinations/dreams of a little Anna Nicole (Vicki Lynn) see herself into the future? That’s when I knew this was not going to be a biography in the true sense. And I too gave a side eye to that cocaine snorting scene while speeding in a convertible with the top down. Impossible. The funeral scene had shades of truth. She did wear a very low plunging white dress and she did wear her wedding veil, but I don’t know if she sang or not. The funeral home was around the corner from my condo. I was able to see the paparazzi frenzy & news crews covering the funeral.
I have met Anna Nicole in 1986, and I partied with her. I am from Houston, and in the 80’s Anna Nicole was somewhat of a local celebrity. I was in college, and my fraternity brothers and I would frequent all the topless bars in town. Topless bars were a huge & popular business in Texas in the 80’s. We frequently saw her dance/strip at Rick’s Cabaret, a very upscale strip joint at the time, and she was stunning gorgeous in those days. This is the club were she met Howard Marshall.
I also have had lap dances by her. Yes her breasts were in my face, and she was fun to talk to & was always woohooing at the table whenever a song came on that she liked. One occasion she bragged to us that she was high on ecstasy, and she even helped us get some once, and we all danced the night away at after hours dance club till the sun came up. The 80’s were a decadent time, and I can say I experienced some decadence with Anna Nicole. So I was always fascinated by her and followed her career highs & lows….
Such a gut wrenching tragic end with birth of a child & a death of a child in a matter of days, and then Anna dying only a few months later.
Wow! That’s crazy. And kinda cool.
I always loved her. I use to make it a point to stay up and watch her T.V. show. I could not watch this movie because I knew it would be a hot smoking mess and I prefer to think of her as she was on that award show asking everyone if they liked her body. Poor Anna. She was a beautiful mess.
she did sing at his funeral while wearing her wedding dress. (there are pics online) she was also pregnant in the clown video. (there is video online) i hate i missed this movie! i have the dvr set for the next recording.
i first fell in love with anna nicole during her reality show. i even own the first season on dvd. i say fell in love, maybe i should say fascinated. i definitely think there was some kind of mental problem there, that is interesting to find out they say borderline personality disorder, i would have thought it was narcism. but after reading the dsmv guildlines, i would say agree yes, that’s her. it sounds like this movie was heavily influenced by the marshall estate, lol. (being dragged into the strip club, yeah ok!)
You know, there always appeared something truly sweet and guileless about ANS even during her outrageous behavior. She just was very naturally likeable. One of the lasting gems she gave me came from her reality show when she called someone an “assjerk.” I still use that and think of her.
I watched it too! So much shame!
The autum leaves scene was a memory of when Danny was a child, it was a flashback after he died and then she was dressed in winter clothes at his funeral. Which was very weird. I mean, it was the Bahamas. It looked like New England in the fall where his burial was and she was dressed in relatively heavy clothes.
She was pregnant during the clown face video because I remember that being a huge deal when it came out. She’s clearly high as a kite on something, and being pregnant made it a huge scandal.
I actually thought the actress playing Anna Nicole did a decent job. The movie itself was campy and ridiculous. And I thought it was strange that they didn’t even go into Anna’s death even a little. She just floats down a red carpet after burying Danny? Really?
the E-channel had a pretty good Anna Nicole Profile on tonight. I made it about 10 minutes into the movie and channel hopped.
Ugh I forgot this was coming on! I’ll have to record a repeat….
Seeing the trailers for this (during the Jodi Arias movie of course!) made me think about her reality show. It truly cracked me up, she was an interesting woman that’s for sure.
Watching the midnight showing. HOW DID THEY DO THE BOOBS?? Did the actress actually get implants? Does she have a twin? She for sure had small boobs and then big ones. She is just now meeting the old man.
I googled the actress that played Anna Nicole and here is exactly what she said in article:
The actual transformation process involved an elaborate collaboration between hair, makeup, wardrobe and, yes, special effects. “The physical transformation was unbelievable,” Bruckner says. “One of the most amazing teams I’ve ever worked with. We had separate prosthetic boobs which has never been done before. We had cheek prosthetics, neck prosthetics, a fat suit — there were so many different looks she had.”
In addition to utilizing wigs and weaves, Bruckner bleached her own hair to mimic Smith’s platinum blonde locks (patterned after Smith’s idol, Marilyn Monroe). But when it comes to Smith’s surgically-enhanced chest, Bruckner happily relied on prosthetics.
“We worked with a special effects team and came up with what size we wanted [the breasts] to be and everything. We didn’t want them to be ridiculously large because we wanted people to focus on the story more than just focusing on her boobs.”
She reports getting the chest just right initially took three and a half hours, but that was cut to an hour and a half with time and practice.
I saw something on tv about it, the actress said she wore a prosthetic, kind of like a shirt. She said it was weird because she felt clothed but looked naked.
There are no makeup prosthetic lines for a chest peice..maybe CGI the bigger into smaller. What other work has this actress done?
U.F.-did she say who the effects team were? Those are really good blend lines and the credits always scroll so fast cant read them
Why? Are you in the market for prosthetic bubbies?
I hear Dr. Maloofhoof is running a special this month, buy one get one free. He is doing mine in October.
T.C. Thats what i like about you. You can take almost any statement and find a way to make it twisted. Keep up the good work!!
For the past few years, I really have not understood why filmmakers think that it’s best to squeeze someone’s life story into a 2 hour length made for television movie. Truthfully, 1 hour and a half due to commercials. I believe these stories would be better told through the broadcast of a 3 part miniseries, with each part being 2 hours long to at least do them justice.
Does anyone know if she was charged in that accident? And, what happened to the photographer with her?
Has anyone seen those breast pieces that the queens on RuPauls drag race wear? I assumed that’s what she had on.
Also, I always thought Urethra Franklin was a lesbian. I’m shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you, to find out after all this time that he has fraternity brothers.
Cool blog! Interesting review of the movie…my perspective is slightly different. I don’t see it as a hallucination, but more like young Vickie Lynn realizing her destiny from an early age. As a little girl, she idolized Marilyn Monroe and this is partly who she based her entire image/persona upon. She told her mother in the movie (and I believe she had this conversation with her mom Virgie in real life during a therapy session) that all she’d ever wanted was to be noticed.
I think that Vickie Lynn/Anna Nicole might have embellished parts of her childhood, like Marilyn Monroe did, but it is possible that she suffered abuse and emotional neglect. She didn’t receive much of an education and was a mother when she was still a kid herself. So I believe that the “hallucinations” as you call them are really just the movie’s way of showing that Vickie Lynn had big dreams and that she hoped to become just like her idol Marilyn. And let’s not forget that the image of Marilyn Monroe was a carefully crafted illusion, too…her real name was Norma Jean Baker, she had naturally brown hair, and came from an underprivileged background with a schizophrenic mother. Maybe Vickie admired Marilyn because she wanted to rise above her own sad life.
I never liked Anna Nicole much, especially when she did the reality show…that was just terrible. But now several years after her death, I see her as a tragic figure, a girl who never had much guidance in life. She was gorgeous in her days as a Guess? model. And when I watch her old interviews, she seemed sweet and almost shy. It is so sad what she eventually became…a morbidly obese, trashy reality “star”. I prefer to remember her as the pretty girl with the innocent face and golden hair, when she was in her prime.
Agnes Bruckner did a great job playing her, but I was shocked to see how plain Agnes (the actress) is without all the makeup and hair dye. She is also much smaller than the real Anna Nicole, who was nearly six feet tall and ranged anywhere from a size 12 at her thinnest to a size 18 or 20.