‘Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me’ Review: Mistreated

“Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me,” a brand new documentary in regards to the mannequin, actress and ’90s tabloid sensation, follows a development established by different nonfiction portraits of démodé stars launched lately, equivalent to “Britney vs Spears” and “Pamela, a Love Story.” Half biography, half supercilious media research essay, these movies are supposed to be kind of pop-cultural correctives, ones which deconstruct the favored picture of superstar by demonstrating (not unfairly) that their topics had been vilified and callously misjudged of their occasions.

This film’s director, Ursula Macfarlane, tries to indicate the true Smith — who was born Vickie Lynn Hogan and raised in Texas — via a mix of merciless archival news clips (The National Enquirer calls her “dumb,” Howard Stern mocks her weight); moody, true-crime-esque B-roll; and interviews with Smith’s uncle, her brother and her former bodyguard, plus a lot of tabloid journalists, reality-TV producers and members of the paparazzi.

The interviews are quick on insights. We hear each that Smith “craved attention” and “always liked being the center of attention.” We be taught that she typically acquired that focus in savvy methods, keen herself to superstardom via a public picture she meticulously styled, and later attracted consideration regardless of efforts to flee it, at nice price to her privateness and psychological well being. But the solemn excavation of Smith’s life and loss of life — she died at 39 of a drug overdose, in 2007 — in the end brings the film, regardless of Macfarlane’s well-meaning efforts, squarely into the territory of what it’s making an attempt to sentence: lurid voyeurism. Smith’s contentious inheritance case, the disputed paternity of her daughter, the tragic loss of life of her son: The film can not assist however sensationalize these occasions, despite the fact that it relates them in a self-consciously plaintive register reasonably than a gawking one. Smith deserved higher than how she was handled. And she deserves higher than this.

Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. Watch on Netflix.