‘Blonde’ Reviews Are In: Critics Praise Ana de Armas’ Performance as Marilyn Monroe

The reviews are in, and it’s safe to say director Andrew Dominik’s Blonde is just as popular among critics as the Hollywood icon it was based on.

Starring Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe, Blonde is a screen adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ 2000 novel of the same name. The movie, which is a fictionalized retelling of the blonde bombshell’s life, is also set to be Netflix’s first NC-17 film for its sexual content.

Despite the film, which Dominik previously said would “offend everyone,” receiving backlash for its portrayal and “exploitation” of Monroe around the time the trailer premiered, critics can’t stop raving about the overall product.

In a review for Decider, Marshall Shaffer pointed out that Blonde is “destined for divisiveness but deserves full consideration for its intellectual merits, not just its emotionally enticing looks — just like Marilyn Monroe herself did.”

Shaffer also warned that the “movie is not out to flatter its audience for simply coming to the realization that culture did her dirty,” saying Dominik “makes it searingly clear that such a belated appreciation is cold comfort to her corpse.”

Vulture echoed the same sentiments, with Bilge Ebiri writing that while Blonde is “mesmerizing, and, at times, deeply moving,” it is also “alienating — again, by design — constantly turning the camera on the viewer, sometimes with Marilyn directly addressing it.”

Ebiri added that the movie is “filled with beautiful sequences” and is “never tedious or boring.”

Deadline sang its praises as Damon Wise told readers, “Forget Seberg, forget Mank, forget Judy — Andrew Dominik’s Venice Film Festival competition entry Blonde takes a blowtorch to the entire concept of the Hollywood biopic and arrives at something almost without precedent.”

Meanwhile, Variety’s Owen Gleiberman compared Blonde to Baz Luhrmann’s biopic of the summer, Elvis. But more importantly, raved about de Armas’ portrayal of the star.

“The movie takes us much closer to Marilyn than Elvis did to Elvis, in part because it’s built around a performance, by Ana de Armas, of breathtaking shimmer and imagination and candor and heartbreak,” he wrote, calling de Armas’ performance a “luscious piece of acting” and saying she “nails it to an uncanny degree.”

The Hollywood Reporter also claimed Blonde is a “must-see” with David Rooney agreeing that de Armas gives a “raw performance” and “holds nothing back when connecting with her character’s pain.”

From the sounds of it, Blonde is not one to miss out on. Luckily, we can begin streaming it on Netflix beginning Sept. 28.