• Network: CBS
  • Series Premiere Date: May 13, 2001
Metascore
51

Mixed or average reviews - based on 12 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 12
  2. Negative: 3 out of 12

Critic Reviews

  1. Los Angeles Daily News
    Reviewed by: David Kronke
    Jan 24, 2022
    50
    Oates is getting to the party pretty darn late; there aren't a lot of bones left to pick through. But what's left isn't pretty, and in adapting "Blonde" the miniseries, director Joyce Chopra and screenwriter Joyce Eliason focus morbidly, as did Oates, on the pervasive darkness in the life of Norma Jeane Baker. [13 May 2001, p.L8]
  2. Reviewed by: Caryn James
    Jan 24, 2022
    50
    Despite Joyce Eliason's pallid script, the director, Joyce Chopra, gets incisive performances from Eric Bogosian as the photographer who started Marilyn's career and Wallace Shawn as the agent who sent her to dozens of casting couches.
  3. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Matthew Gilbert
    Jan 24, 2022
    50
    It doesn't take you close to the heart of a self-destructive icon. It simply skims the surface of the legend, sad and beautiful as she was. [11 May 2001]
  4. Detroit Free Press
    Reviewed by: Mike Duffy
    Jan 24, 2022
    50
    In translating Oates' ambitious and stylized retelling of Monroe's life to television, screenwriter Joyce Eliason and director Joyce Chopra have unfortunately created a fairly dumb "Blonde." [14 May 2001, p.1G]
  5. Orlando Sentinel
    Reviewed by: Hal Boedeker
    Jan 24, 2022
    40
    The miniseries, airing Sunday and Wednesday, tries to shatter Hollywood glamour by examining how Norma Jean Baker suffered in becoming the icon Monroe. But the heavy-handed approach will send viewers fleeing in droves from this relentlessly dark psychological portrait. [13 May 2001, p.4]