Metacritic reviews

This is dark, squalid, squinting-through-the-keyhole stuff, and it can make a film like The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe sound like a guilty-pleasure piece of true-crime trash, one of those glorified tabloid-TV exposés with a patina of investigative credibility. In fact, it’s a very good film.

"The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe" too often feels like it's merely scratching the surface and not trying to go much deeper. While I understand that the research of Anthony Summers is what helped shape this doc, Summers himself is far too present here, to the point where the documentary begins to feel more about him writing the book than it is about Monroe.

The film is affecting, because it outlines the saddening end of an adored American icon. But for all its promises of unheard insights, it seldom goes much deeper than an E! True Hollywood Story.

Cooper’s film does no independent research of its own, and therefore can’t possibly offer any tidbits that weren’t first reported in the pages of “Goddess.”

Given how much of the new material on Monroe is audio-based, one is left wondering why a project like this wouldn’t work better as a podcast. There is little that’s visually compelling about Cooper’s work, the type of investigation perhaps best listened to in the background of another activity.

Mostly the film presents a banal rehash of established facts and well-circulated rumors about Monroe’s life.

Watching The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe serves as a reminder, to paraphrase Elton John’s musical tribute, that her candle burned out long before the exploitation of her ever did.

It is too touch-and-go, too speculative about her life and mysterious death, to be of any genuine purpose.

The biographical and fictional afterlives of Monroe are particularly interesting, and probably tell us more about the authors who choose to dedicate their lives to researching her than anything new about Monroe, herself. One wishes that Cooper, and Summers, would’ve realized this.

This movie is mostly just another brisk recounting of a much-scrutinized actor’s tragic life, coupled with some unconvincing and often confusing coverage of the conspiracy theories surrounding Monroe’s death. The results feel tawdry and shallow.