Lifetime movie with extra grit

Rating: 5/10 (18 January 2004)

Charlize Theron's fine, albeit slightly overrated, performance, centers the movie. Unfortunately, there's not much surrounding it. Condensing anyone's life story into a two hour package inevitably involves simplifying details. However, in Monster, the movie didn't just simplify the story -- it eliminated any complexity whatsoever. While the movie (smartly) doesn't deify Aileen Wuornos, it doesn't provide much insight other than sketching out a brief history of her troubled background and that she wanted to be loved. Yet the movie seems to fear too many rough edges -- reading reviews of this movie that give it credit for its portrayal of a seedy Florida milieu, I'm struck by the fact that most of these reviewers wouldn't have the slightest clue what that really would have been like. And that was one area where the movie was most unconvincing. For all the talk about Theron's make up job, what about Christina Ricci's? Considering they were broke most of the film, she must have stocked up on the Cover Girl before running away from home.
This isn't just a matter of picking details. Detachment takes the place of authenticity, which only serves to magnify the lack of context that this movie has. It's not quite comfortable coming from the point of view of the mad Wuornos. And Selby is pretty much a blank. As the movie crawled to its inevitable inevitability, I was left wondering what was point the filmmakers were trying to get across other than it really sucked to be Aileen Wuornos.
The best sequence in the movie is when Wuornos goes out to get a real job. Theron does a great job of conveying both the inflated optimism Wuornos develops in the throes of love, and the quick turnaround when the real world treats the way it always had before. This is the one part of the movie that actually said something.