The Notorious Bettie Page Critic Reviews

Because we are left with so many questions, the film emerges as emotionally lacking and flat when it should be moving, or at least enlightening.Read the full review

The film takes a little time to explore the political landscape of the time, and features an Oscar-worthy lead performance.Read the full review

In spite of the film's surface allure -- no, not the leather, the period evocation -- and a fine performance by Gretchen Mol in the title role, Bettie is in bondage to a shallow, black-and-white script.Read the full review

Mol nails it, in a performance that should earn her a comeback on a Heath Ledger-like scale.Read the full review

Harron has said she was determined to be nonjudgmental about Page, to do justice to the woman's "mystery and ambiguity." In practice, however, that attitude plays as coldness, and Page, for all her remarkable zest, comes off as a not terribly interesting person we're given no incentive to become involved with.Read the full review

Principally a work of gorgeous surfaces, shot mostly in silvery black-and-white film by the cinematographer Mott Hupfel, with an occasional splash of saturated color.Read the full review

While Gretchen Mol delivers a delightfully exuberant lead performance, the film itself seldom goes beyond skin deep.Read the full review

Floats on the charm and the labors of its lead actress, Gretchen Mol, who single-handedly makes the picture worth seeing.Read the full review

The movie, in a sense, is just like Bettie's photos: all glorious surface. The Notorious Bettie Page captures, with seductive finesse, how Bettie Page happened, yet what it leaves us with is the tantalizing enigma of a girl who couldn't truly be ''bad'' because she made sex divinely delicious.Read the full review