Critic Reviews

Bobulova is delightful to watch, playing the younger Coco as winsome, stubborn, independent and gifted. MacLaine, seen always with a cigarette between two fingers, has less screen time, but she commands every minute in which she appears.

Shirley MacLaine will get most of the attention for playing fashion legend Coco Chanel in this smart-looking and solidly crafted new Lifetime biopic premiering Saturday night.

We don't get a great deal of character development, nor do we always get the truth, but with Coco, there is plenty to see and do.

While little of this is boring, the movie only sizzles and sparks when it jumps out of flashback mode and into the 1950s "present," with Ms. MacLaine as a slightly cranky and tottering but totally grand old dame.

MacLaine, who apparently decided not to bother to attempt a French accent, isn't served well by a script that essentially has her introducing flashbacks.

Perhaps appropriately, the period trappings and costumes are impeccable, part of a miniseries that weaves six production logos into its hemline--suggesting more commerce than art in its conception.

Oh, it's not very French and the dialogue is absurd, but somehow from this divine mess emerges something that at least approximates a woman you have to admire.

Czech actress Barbora Bobulova has the greater misfortune of acting out Harlequin-romance shenanigans amid Pepé le Pew accents. Worst of all, the subject's revolutionary designs are almost entirely marginalized.

The movie looks great, like a very extended perfume commercial. But it has no substance.

Because it is such a loopy work of hagiography, it is never getting her right.