Recensie Being Mary Tyler Moore [HBO Max]

Director: James Adolfo | Time to play: 155 minutes | Year: 2023

In the Netherlands it appeared in 1994 The Sylvia Millecam Show, and that it was about a single woman starting a career in an office. In our country at that time, that was a concept that no one viewed with a bad eye. That’s because it was based on a 1970 American sitcom called The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Right then and there that was groundbreaking television. Only one much-loved actress could get away with murder, and that was Mary Tyler Moore. Too bad this movie about her life, Being Mary Tyler Moore it lacks the spark.

The sitcom appeared again almost ten years earlier. The Dick Van Dyke Show in the American subway. At first, viewers sought out the man known by the title, but soon her wife garnered all the attention, and Mary Tyler Moore played her. In addition to being one of the few women on TV who didn’t wear a skirt but pants (whoops!), she also had a charming smile and an unexpected talent for comedy. That was the beginning of her career, and this movie shows how she went on.

Being Mary Tyler Moore He does it completely by the book. One can show them in a course for amateur filmmakers to have a cast for a standard documentary. Goes so well from A to B that routine is soon established and effort is required to maintain attention; with a two hour play time, that proves to be quite the challenge.

Moore’s life takes place from birth to death in almost chronological order. Notable moments receive dry attention for a short time, and then continue on the life line. The title is poorly chosen because it is not tangible what it must have been like to be in his shoes, this could have been better The life of Mary Tyler Moore as this is all that is shown.

Actually she deserves more. Being Mary Tyler Moore It shouldn’t have covered his whole life, several aspects are deep enough to dig deeper. There is talk of the feminist impact she had, but it would have been nice to see that as well. Images of street culture and work before and after the impact of The Mary Tyler Moore Show exist.

It wasn’t just those pants she wore in her breakthrough, but also the fact that she sympathetically enforced that her character didn’t wear a skirt. Because she herself wore pants in everyday life and so did the women around her. Contributing to positive cultural change is always good, especially in such a passive way.

To later get the show with his name in the title, he had to fight a little more. But she handled it smartly with her then-wife: He created her own production company to make the show herself. Not that everything was allowed, but part of her reins stayed in her hands.

Another topic that could be spent a lot more time on is that Mary Tyler Moore had a problem with the public only seeing her as a fun girlfriend. She was also proud, insecure, an alcoholic, and ambitious to prove herself in other genres. There was so much more to that wide-eyed smile, but she never showed. And she then played herself in most of it on her own show.

The only thing surprising enough to stand out is that the same person who played a headstrong, independent woman on TV seemed to be someone who always longed for love in real life. She talks about her third husband, whom she later introduced in the tone of a mild teenager, that she has an old soul and that her simple gestures are really cool.

That’s something the movie doesn’t even consciously think about, but just shows, though of course not for long because the next point is right around the corner. Being Mary Tyler Moore of course, it ends with her death in 2017. Mary Tyler Moore is not the most famous name here, but in the US she is an icon. In particular through her own show of hers, which she gave the emancipation of women a ladder built on the laughter of the spectators. Through this documentary she will at least get name recognition that some people didn’t have yet.

Being Mary Tyler Moore can be seen in hbo max.