Valley of the Dolls

Jennifer, Annie & Neely    

There is Annie, a beautiful young lady from the outskirts of New York City. It takes place in 1965, an interesting time, TV and radio are popular and new. She is a typical country girl, earnest, hardworking and dedicated. She goes to the city to get a job, her mother is unwell, and her aunt is too old for any labor. 

She is the protagonist.

She gets a job as an assistant for an entertainment company that trains and broadcasts musicians and actors on broadway. She is being greeted rather unconventionally, catches the eye of a handsome and gentlemanly agent named Lyon that works for an aspiring singer named Neely O'Hara, and is being thrust into the world of work rather rushedly.

Overall the movie was quite boring at times, with unnecessary drama stirred up between the understudy Neely and a senior actress/singer Helen Lawson. 

Jennifer is a beautiful lady but in her words, she is "talentless besides her body", seemingly a colleague or friend of Neely and Annie. Relationships form, Jennifer's lover being another rising singer named Tony, who later becomes senile at the age of 30 due to a genetic mental disease. Jennifer tries her best to afford his sanatorium, working as a sort of sex worker and in "french art films" thinly veiled pornography. 

She grows sick of the occupation and quits, she becomes hospitalized and diagnosed with breast cancer. Her husband Tony has forgotten her, his mental illness rapidly worsening. After ending a call with her mother who only contacts her for money she commits suicide by overdosing due to sadness and hopelessness.

What I found strange is that neither Neely nor Annie or Lyon were seen or shown mourning for her death whatsoever. Annie was interviewed by Paparazzi but she seemed rather overwhelmed by the question than the fact someone she was close with killed herself. She was the last one to see her alive after all. Therefore I believe Annie is rather cold and unsympathetic. As is Lyon, who, while leading Annie on kissed Neely, who initiated it, but he did not resist whatsoever and even laughed it off.

Neely becomes famous throughout the span of the movie, and quickly becomes nasty-mouthed and rude due to stress and drug and alcohol abuse, she becomes addicted to "dolls" which keep her awake and functioning for movie roles and such.

Neely was put into a sanatorium after catching her second husband cheating on her. She overdoses and wakes up in the hospital, she reluctantly recovers and has what seems to be a redemption arc before she reverts to her arrogant and irritable self. When she pushes everyone away, including her agent Lyon, she turns back to abusing "dolls" and wanders the streets at night drugged up and drunk. She is last seen weeping at a closed theater that was supposed to host her show, which she missed due to her angry fit.

Annie leaves the city and rejoins her aunt, shortly after Lyon comes to find her. The wounds of her mother's death are still fresh and the memory of having been denied marriage the first time leads to her rejecting Lyon's proposal. The last scene is spent showing Annie taking a walk in the woods, playing in the snow. 

Now, that movie was a blur, to be honest, it was so boring to watch simply because I refused to look at the screen whenever one of the idiotic characters did another stupid mistake. I only felt sympathy for Jennifer, Neely's first ex-husband, and Tony.

I will rate it a 5/10. 

Annoying characters, disorienting pacing, uninteresting storyline, anticlimactic and meaningless ending. The reason I didn't give it a lower rating is because the visuals were stunning nonetheless and the acting was formidable.