Sylvia Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)December 12th, 2003
Planet Sick-Boy: http://www.sick-boy.com
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If somebody gave me a pop quiz about Sylvia Plath, I'd probably fail it worse than Barry Bonds would fare on a steroids test. Aside from knowing enough to cut a wide path around those weird girls who read The Bell Jar in high school, I couldn't tell you one thing about Plath. Don't know where she lived. Don't know when she lived. Don't know if she looked anything like Gwyneth Paltrow.
So, in a way, I was the ideal viewer for Sylvia. A fresh slate. No preconceived notions about anything, and completely without the lofty expectations a big Plath fan might have as they eagerly await the release of their idol's big screen story.
Sadly, all of that goodwill ended fairly soon into my Sylvia voyage. While one can't fault the story - it's yet another typical biopic about a tragic dead person, complete with self-important, leaden pace - for being too agonizingly gloomy, one can threaten to brain the filmmakers for making it all so excruciatingly dull (I shouted, "Hurry up and ice yourself already!" more than a few times). The film follows Plath's life from her college years at Cambridge through the day she finally crammed her head in the oven and checked out for good. Paltrow plays the eponymous Plath, and does a decent job acting sufficiently crazy, but in a slightly more likable way than, say, a movie about Elizabeth Wurtzel.
1:50 - R for sexuality/nudity and language
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