meh

I don't usually comment on movies I didn't see thru to the conclusion (I made it about half way) but I'm annoyed enough about this to spare a few lines.

Terrible stuff. Boneheaded cuts to irrelevant material. Some kid in the 50s getting cancer treatment. The bombing of Hiroshima. Seances. And as Timothy Dalton recently remarked, is it really necessary to have nude love scenes in movies today? Maybe in a romance drama, I'd say, but in a biopic of a dual Nobel Laureate? Seriously? Take a wander over to the woman's Wikipedia page and ask yourself how nude love scenes might figure in the telling of her very interesting life and achievements. Maybe google a few pics of her. A Playboy centerfold she aint, and never was. No one would dream of putting nude love scenes into a biopic of say Einstein. But yeah, M Curie was a woman. And Pike is playing her. So nudity it is. FFS

And technically the film is awful: Amateurish prosthetic makeup; clumsy, unimaginative camerawork; stupid editing; dialogue that falls out of the mouths of the actors like lead.

In a time when more than ever there has been the momentum to tell women's stories faithfully and respectfully, we get this crap. If this had been made as a telemovie back in the 70s it would STILL have been substandard.

/rant

The title "Radioactive" was already an indication that the movie would not be just a biopic of a great woman. It gave the impression that the director wanted it to be a spectacular mix of fictional and non-fictional elements, interwoven with the positive and negative consequences of her discovery. Therefore the usual inclusion of love scenes, conflict and tragedy to attract the general audience should not be a surprise to anyone.

I would've preferred other alternative titles like "Marie Curie - Elemente des Lebens", "Marie Curie: Pionjär, geni, rebell" or simply "Madame Curie". However, then the content would've had to be adjusted accordingly to a more sober depiction of her life.

@wonder2wonder said:

The title "Radioactive" was already an indication that the movie would not be just a biopic of a great woman. It gave the impression that the director wanted it to be a spectacular mix of fictional and non-fictional elements, interwoven with the positive and negative consequences of her discovery. Therefore the usual inclusion of love scenes, conflict and tragedy to attract the general audience should not be a surprise to anyone.

I would've preferred other alternative titles like "Marie Curie - Elemente des Lebens", "Marie Curie: Pionjär, geni, rebell" or simply "Madame Curie". However, then the content would've had to be adjusted accordingly to a more sober depiction of her life.

The title 'Radioactive' might have been a clue to you that the movie would contain irrelevant and stupid material, but it certainly wasn't to me. My issue is not that the movie was 'spectacular' rather than 'sober'. It certainly wasn't spectacular and actually managed, despite the salacious, unnecessary elements (pardon the pun) to be dull. By contrast, in 1943, Hollywood made a film interesting enough that it got good box office and garnered 7 Oscar nominations. That film, the simply titled Madam Curie, didn't require Greer Garson to take her clothes off.

The idea that nearly 80 years later a 21st Century retelling of the story, adapted from a book by a female author, directed by a woman, would actually be more regressive than an early 20th Century movie, is as unexpected as it is unacceptable.