Nice atmosphere, and Gretchen Mol is an attractive mimic, but this film neither intensifies or solves the mystery of Bettie, the most cheerful and wholesome of all bondage pin-ups.

Not much of a story to tell but the film has an interesting look and style about it. The opening scene was strong but the rest was generally a bit disappointing.

Mol puts in a good performance, but the film feels like a damp squib in most regards. It's just a by-the-numbers biopic, taking us point by point through the various important moments of Page's modelling career, but never offering anything particularly insightful into her personality. The brief moments of colour photography made me wish the whole thing was in colour rather than the drab B&W we get for most of the runtime.

Gretchen Mol is amazingly innocent and sexy as Bettie, but the film seems to cover only the surface of her story. There is fashion, but no provocation here.

Coined "the pin-up girl of the universe," the film shows an innocent look on the model that is Bettie Page. From her humble beginnings outside of Nashville to her career in NYC, the film never seems to involve the audience. Bettie seems as innocent as the 1950s, and her life events seeming very non-chalant... which made me care less about the story. Plot was seemingly predictable, and the ending was no surprise, even if you didn't know what happened to her. Overall feeling = meh.

"Resisting the conventions of the traditional biopic at every turn, The Notorious Bettie Page never finds its footing as a story." - Jeremiah Kipp

Harron, with the help of the charismatic Mol in the title role, crafts an efficient, straightforward biographical look at the popular pin-up queen. Tonally inconsistent, however, at times suggesting that choices Page made as a result of being objectified were regretted, while others show her reveling in the leers of those who relegated her to the status of sexpot. Whether too dim to understand the dichotomy, or having too much fun to care, in the end she just leaves more questions than answers.

Sort of a let down.

A fairly entertaining biopic that I feel (perhaps unfairly) is let down by the ending. Though I'm sure she had her reasons, the movie never gives me a feeling as to why she made the decisions she did, and therefore still makes me feel distant from Bettie Page as a person.

Good perf by Mol. Cute direction and cinematography.

Fascinating. Page is presented as a nice, intelligent Christian lady who just happens to fall into this line of work -- "I do declare, I don't see what the big fuss is over these silly pictures that make so many people happy" -- and the ensuing stir her famous images cause is handled with an even-handedness I would never have suspected. Plus Gretchen Mol looks great with no clothes on. *swoon* :-)

Not as good as I'd hoped; not as bad as I had feared.

Bettie Page, in February 2007 Playboy: "I thought [Gretchen Mol] was real pretty, with those big eyes. She was good-looking, but the way she would screw up her face and all, I never did that. I didn't think her figure was too good. She was too tall, but she had a pretty face. That movie is full of lies. (...) The basic story is true, but the details are a lot of baloney - or most of them are."

I was never specially interested of a funnily naughty Bettie Page hype, but sure when the movie appeared I wanted to see her biopic. Movie is made as a document type and that is the strength and fall side of the film. Mol is okay as dum head Bettie, but 50's porn and bondage was pretty silly and inocent. The movie would be more interesting if director took more artistic freedom according the story.

It's fairly well-acted and well-made, but it fails to really prove to me why this person was worth making a biopic about. It's good it's only 90 minutes, because that's just long enough to support the framework of the story without collapsing.

Mol does nice work in the title role, embracing Page's self-assurance in her modeling work. The make-up of the film prevents her from digging deeper as the bulk of Page's personal life challenges are reduced to cameo appearances. It's as if Harron is including the material of true biography out of dispirited obligation. The film duplicates the very indignity it was intended to exculpate. It discards Bettie Page as a person just as callously as those who cast her aside when the pin-up era ended.