The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

I was so excited to see this movie, as the book has been on my list to read for awhile. I had not gotten around to reading the book prior to seeing the movie & perhaps that would have helped?

The movie is disjointed & makes little sense. It is primarily about Henrietta's daughter & her relationship with the book's author. I was okay with that, but characters were never explained & many decisions in the film & dialogue made no sense b/c the story wasn't flushed out enough to understand the importance of the choices or dialogue. For example the "talk to the men" theme is made a big deal of in the beginning. It's repeated several times. It's never explained though. Why were they insistent that Skloot could only talk to the men. It came from several characters, but then most of the movie is spent NOT talking to the men. It never made any sense. Some character's behavior was not explained until almost the end of the film, which really hurt the viewer's ability to empathize & warm to the characters.

It was such a shame as there were many great actors who performed well, but ultimately the lack of background info & poor choices, made this movie a mess. I had such high hopes :-( I'm still looking fwd to reading the book, maybe that will fill in the huge gaps of the movie. You won't miss much if you skip this one!