40cakes | The Notorious Bettie Page Movie

So it's a biopic and while one is often allowed creative license, there is the restriction that you should keep it relatively close to the real subject. That being said, you can do your damndest to make the real subject seem awesome.

Bettie Page in this film is a really dumb, naive girl, with no control over her own destiny, but does as she is told and goes with the flow. She's molested by her father, has a short failed marriage, and is gang-raped by a seemingly nice fellow. Personally, I think I'd never want to so much as look at another man again. So when a stranger approaches her on the beach and asks to take her photo, it seems really odd that she doesn't even give so much as a blink to the thought of trusting him. In fact, it seems really odd that she doesn't so much as give a blink to any man when they have her over to their home studios and ask her to show off her ass and take off her top, or eventually put on spiked heels and threaten a fellow pin-up with a whip.

The film also took a very puritanical view of the pin-up/pornography industry, eventually showing us so much of the Congressional "smut probe"* that I felt like the filmmakers WANTED us to side against Bettie and believe that pornography is evil and destroying America from within. So much time in the movie was given to this useless tangent when more pressing and interesting things could've been addressed. Eventually, when Bettie returns to the Church and becomes one of those crazy people in the street reading from the Bible and handing out pamphlets, we're lead to believe that this is a GOOD turn in her life.

It had its cute moments, mostly due to Gretchen Mol, who was an amazing actress. Everyone was a great actor in this really. I just wish the material had been better.

*I think I might have one of those in my hatbox...