If you've never watched anything related to this story before, please don't start with this movie. It completely downplays the real story and kills every interesting part of it.
First off, I don't really understand why another adaptation to the same story was even needed to begin with - there were multiple documentaries covering it already (I recommend "Mommy Dead and Dearest" the most), as well as the drama series "The Act", all of which were much closer to the real story than this.
But if you are already making a movie that might introduce new people to the story, at least do it well. This movie was not only super different than the actual story, but has also completely cut out all of the really shocking and interesting parts of the story, some of which were very important parts of this story that were not even slightly mentioned here, making the story in the movie much more dull and boring compared to the real one. And then there are the parts of the story that were included here, but those were changed so much that they have ruined the whole build up into the finale (which as I mentioned before, was nowhere near as shocking as the real story).
This is such a poor adaptation to the story, that I feel like the only way anyone could enjoy it is if they've never heard of the story before, but if you've never watched it before, then what reason would you have to start with this failed attempt to present the story when there are so many better alternatives out there?
If they were going to change so much, I feel like they should have went completely different and do something like the movie "Run" did where it's just a complete fiction story about the same condition, but this movie was clearly trying to tell Gypsy's specific story, which is why it being done in such a poor way is so disappointing.
So as someone who is really familiar with this story and has watched anything possible related to it, I can't stress any more how much I recommend that you don't start with this movie as your introduction.
First off, I don't really understand why another adaptation to the same story was even needed to begin with - there were multiple documentaries covering it already (I recommend "Mommy Dead and Dearest" the most), as well as the drama series "The Act", all of which were much closer to the real story than this.
But if you are already making a movie that might introduce new people to the story, at least do it well. This movie was not only super different than the actual story, but has also completely cut out all of the really shocking and interesting parts of the story, some of which were very important parts of this story that were not even slightly mentioned here, making the story in the movie much more dull and boring compared to the real one. And then there are the parts of the story that were included here, but those were changed so much that they have ruined the whole build up into the finale (which as I mentioned before, was nowhere near as shocking as the real story).
This is such a poor adaptation to the story, that I feel like the only way anyone could enjoy it is if they've never heard of the story before, but if you've never watched it before, then what reason would you have to start with this failed attempt to present the story when there are so many better alternatives out there?
If they were going to change so much, I feel like they should have went completely different and do something like the movie "Run" did where it's just a complete fiction story about the same condition, but this movie was clearly trying to tell Gypsy's specific story, which is why it being done in such a poor way is so disappointing.
So as someone who is really familiar with this story and has watched anything possible related to it, I can't stress any more how much I recommend that you don't start with this movie as your introduction.