As the movie opens, Martha Stewart is cheerfully entering the studio where her TV series is filmed, behaving exactly like the charming, sickeningly perfect Martha we all know. Then she gets angry because things aren't exactly as the should be. Once on camera, she returns to the familiar calm, serene personality--until something else goes wrong!
Then comes the scandal that ruined Martha's reputation in the eyes of many, but not all. I remember the scene on the CBS morning show going a little differently, but then I only saw a partial clip. It was a little more exciting and dramatic here.
Then we see flashbacks. I find it hard to believe Martha would have sabotaged a competitor as a young child, but not everything has to be the truth in movies such as these. Then we see the teenage Martha and we begin to understand why she turned out the way she did. Her father was also a perfectionist, and nothing was ever good enough for him. Meanwhile, Martha has a hard time making friends because of her need to be perfect and better than everyone else.
Martha goes to college and begins a modeling career, and she meets her future husband. We see the events that led to her becoming the icon she is today. In short, even when it finally happened, she was not content to be a suburban housewife. She saw the opportunity to make her housewife status into something much more, and she risked a friendship and her marriage to become famous.
I thought Cybill Shepherd did a wonderful job. She did the on-screen perfect Martha very nicely, even to the point of being almost satirical. She could be perky as well, but when she was, she seemed like Cybill. But she was mostly the determined, confident and generally intolerant Martha that we have never seen. And she did that quite nicely. When she had to make the big business deals herself, rather than depending on others, it was quite exciting to watch. The actors playing Martha's father (who was demanding but occasionally tender) and the teenage Martha (charming and actually adorable) also made quite an impression.
It wasn't pleasant, but this may very well have been the way it happened. As is true of many movies like this, it presented mostly the negative side, but there is only so much that can be done in two hours. I wasn't expecting nearly as much from her early years, but we needed to see that background. At least we got to see that Martha wasn't as perfect as we may have thought. A good job by everyone. Not a masterpiece, but a good TV-movie.
