Missed opportunity ignores most of the story

Rating: 5/10 (22 April 2007)

I don't have the same negative opinion of the way the theme of love between the two women was handled as some others I know, but this was a difficult movie to watch. I had to skip a many scenes and fast-forward through more, unable to stomach all the aimless underclass squalor. Bleagh!
Charlize Theron was wa-a-ay too one-dimensional, having learned a single defiant stance and holding it through the entire film. This made her characterization stultifying and boring. If you've seen interviews with the real Aileen Wournos, she could be quiet and earnest, but always psychotically intense. Given to outbursts of rage, of course, she displayed a dynamic range lacking in this portrayal. Theron is always weaving back and forth or bobbing up and down. Wournos could sit quietly with Manson lamps and scare the drizzle out of you.
Ricci was fabulous in her wonderful performance as Wournos's lover and companion. She played it with just the right balance of understanding, possessive mania and codependency, and appropriately reacted to the well-presented backstory of her parental abuse. Unfortunately, the director chose to focus more on Wournos's crimes than the affair, which puts Monster in the class of average films, not ground breakers. Had the unspeakable violence Wournos gave and got served as the stratum upon which the remarkable lesbian love affair was precariously balanced, the movie would have been truly remarkable. And this may have rescued Theron from her one-dimensional characterization as well.
The deterioration of that affair after the capture of Wournos was not portrayed. The movie effectively ends with her capture. We don't see the betrayal by Ricci or Theron's loyal forgiveness. We see nothing of the court battle and media coverage. Nor do we explore the rare female serial killer mentality. By focusing so heavily on crime and milieu, Monster misses much of the guts of the Wournos story. Compare this film to In Cold Blood or The Boston Strangler, where the police investigation and court trial play a role. Here, they are ignored.
One last thing about Theron. Why the weight gain? There were only a couple of brief scenes where she was nearly nekky, and she certainly could have just used Hollywood technology for those. It wasn't worth the build-up just to see her with cellulite. It did nothing for Stallone in the forgettable Cop Land, and does nothing for Theron here. The real Ricci character was an overweight woman with missing teeth. Why didn't they go for realism with her as well? For one thing, nobody would be interested in watching two frumpy people in a murderous love story. But why keep Ricci attractive, and make Wournos look so god-awful?