Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Fantastic!

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

As with any biography of a controversial person, the reviewers of this film fall mostly into two categories: those that love her and those that hate her. Their reviews are not based on the film but on the person. So how should it be judged? Did the film entertain? Yes. Did it inform? Was it professionally produced. Yes.I found the film to be the finest and deepest biography I'd ever seen. I was amazed at all of the personal photos and excellent use of stock footage. There's no question it was overlong. The interview footage got repetitive. And it was hardly balanced about her later personal life. But what do you expect? It was produced by her disciples. But it abstained from making her a super hero. As far as I can tell it was pretty factual. And it gave excellent insight to her character. What more could you want in a biography?

"The highest tribute to Ayn Rand, is that her critics must distort everything that she stood for in order to attack her. She advocated reason, not force; the individual's rights to freedom of action, speech, and association; self-responsibility not self-indulgence, and a live-and-let-live society in which each individual is treated as an END, not the MEANS of others' ends. How many critics would dare to honestly state these ideas, & say "..and that's what I reject?" The above quote was stated by Barbara Branden. Ms. Branden, author of "The Passion of Ayn Rand" knew her best. For an in depth of Rand's ideas read her novel "Atlas Shrugged".

screams a newspaper header pictured in this documentary. Finally, the stupid people of the world have their own philosopher & this film covers her life's work & story very well. Bereft of any intellectual discussions, this film repeats Rand's "philosophy" over & over: individualism over collectivism, rationality above all, humans must heed their inner voice....repeated over & over with exceptionally annoying background music. It's quite obvious that this "documentary" is really a thinly veiled marketing video produced by the Ayn Rand Institute. All of those who are interviewed are her friends. The film never engages critically or substantively ( or is there no substance to "objectivism"?) with philosophical, economic, or political ideas. Hence, the contradictions that crop up (to a person with the capacity to think, anyway) are glaring: Ayn is on the hunt for the "ultimate man" with her fiction yet marries an unassuming dolt, Ayn is preaching individualism from a rarerified life inside a Frank Lloyd Wright castle while the collective masses outside protest segregation...The film does cover a few details of her life in order to portray her as the classic immigrant to the US who struggles against all odds to become sucessful. But the filmmakers really have to go overboard to do this, hence the ad nauseum repetition. They repeat over & over that she was fascinated with the New York skyline in Hollywood movies & that this shaped her philosophy & novels. But, she had to walk to work to save up enough money so to see a movie (420 movies in 2 years that is).....of course, lots of others emigrated to the US on dreams too & at least they don't have an over-inflated sense of self. So what makes Ayn so special? That she's unapollagetically an atheist? Emma Goldman is more interesting. That she didn't bake cookies....? A lot of housewives have contributed more tosociety than this woman. That her books helped many conservatives and libertarians let go of any social conscious they may have had & helped them succeed in business without even trying? Her most popular books were fiction & not self-help or how-to books. That she set up the Ayn Rand institute, an hommage to herself, to keep the cult going. Scientology, Focus on The Family, and UFO abductees are just as successful at this...The only conclusion I can come to after seeing this film is that Ayn Rand became successful because she is the truest mirror for Americans to bask in their own reflection:1. act selfishly, it is your true nature 2. self-promotion makes your life's work into a work of art, and the more money you die with, the more staying power your life's work will have. 3. the more you repeat things, the truer they become 4. all of your intellectual capacity, moral guidance & reflection can be summed up on a cocktail napkin.....even if you've had 3 too many martinis. oh, and repeat after me: "There's no place like home, there's no place like home...."

As someone who spent a lot of time reading and thinking about Rand's ideas many years ago, I found this film very informative and entertaining. It presents Rand with just the right breath of grandeur. It shows her the way I like to think of her.Like Thomas Jefferson, flaws in Rand's personal life throw a bit of shadow on her intellectual triumphs. This is not to suggest that Rand's achievements come close to Jefferson's. But, like Rand, his lifestyle contradicted his life's major achievement: the Author of The Declaration of Independence was a slaveholder.In Rand's case, the champion of individualism surrounded herself with a "Collective" of yes-men (and -women) that systematically excluded anyone who didn't toe the line on matters of philosophy, religion, aesthetics, and even cigarette smoking. Incredibly, this champion of "independent judgement based on facts" would actually forbid her followers from reading things written by people she deemed "evil."But, just as a tribute to Jefferson might not dwell on slavery at Monticello or mention Sally Hemmings, this love letter to Ayn doesn't explore her problematic social life or her peculiar band of followers. But I still think this documentary earned its accolades from the film industry. Ayn Rand probably would have approved of the film herself.