Movie Review: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

[inverarity]

I'm not sure I've ever actually watched an entire Marlyn Monroe movie before. Of course I've caught parts of one movie or another flipping channels over the years, but I just never had much interest in sitting down to watch her.

Like my occasional random book picks to step outside my usual reading habits, I've taken to occasional random walks through Netflix. Hence, this cheesy 1953 musical, most famous for Monroe's iconic performance of "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend."



Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is your basic 1950s romcom. Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell star as a pair of showgirls on a cruise. Monroe is the mercenary Lorelei Lee, whose fiance's rich father has sent a private detective to dig up dirt on her. Naturally, the detective falls for Lorelei's sharp-tongued best friend, Dorothy Shaw (Russell).

While Lorelei loves diamonds, Dorothy likes hot guys. Of course nothing more sexual than dancing happens in the movie, but this was certainly not a movie just for Marilyn Monroe fans — there's an awful lot of beefcake as well.



Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell were gorgeous, but neither of them were great actresses. They weren't too bad as a comic duo, but the musical numbers and the cheesecake/beefcake are really the only reasons to watch this.