I was overall entertained. James Franco was good as James Dean, but I'm not too sure about being Golden Globe caliber. Maybe. He had a lot of emotion going on. The story was good and his biography was covered at a very quick pace, just to get the key points. The ending was interesting, as was the p.o.v. throughout. Hearing James speak as narrator was a different approach than I would have expected.

james franco is seriously a reincarnation of james dean. they look extremely similar for one, and franco does an incredible job portraying dean's life. so worth the money!

They made Dean seem to be one dimensional. They showed his "rebel" side as very dominant with just a touch of lonely boy and jokester. I couldn't even imagine him ever slapping Pier! Where did THAT come from? I DID like the reinactments of the scenes from his movies and the early scenes of Dean as a child.
I'd like to see a movie made from input with the people who knew him and are still alive to say, "Jimmy did/didn't do that." I don't need his life in chronological order. I just want the facts. He was fascinating enough not to need embellishing.

It was simply amazing. James Franco out did himself. I hope James got something really good out of doing this movie because is was one of the best performances that I've ever seen him in. I was already a major Franco fan but this movie gave me a great respect for the man (before I just liked his face-so sue me I'm female) You wouldn't be able to tell between him and the actual James Dean, it was that good. I absolutely recommend this movie for anyone who enjoys a good flick. It gave an excellent insight into the teen heartthrob of the 1950s.

Despite good acting and production values, with all the research now available on James Dean, and in spite of the fact that this television movie is directed by somebody who claims to have been an acqaintance of Dean's, you would have thought the writer and producer could have come up with something better than the piece of cliched fanzine twaddle it ultimately devolves into. It would take too long to point out all the oversights and inaccuracies only too obvious to anyone who has even read lightly on the subject - suffice to mention three of the most egregious:

1) Nowhere is the powerful aid rendered to Dean in his evolving career in both Los Angeles and New York by his influential mentor/lover Rogers Brackett even hinted at;

2) Dean's Warners public relations sponsored liaison with the actress Pier Angeli is orchestrated into a full-blown romance such as would never have been, and certainly was not, tolerated by the young actress's domineering mother;

3) The utterly unsubstantiated (and indeed fairly libellous) claim that Dean was not his father's legitimate son is whipped up to provide some kind of kitschy rationale for Dean to go out and kill himself, even though in actuality Dean had everything to live for; indeed everything he had fought and struggled for during the last five years of his life was now within his grasp. Ironically, as it happened, Dean was closer to his father at the time of his death than he had been for a very long time.

In short, this movie must be regarded as yet another attempt by Hollywood to distort and twist the real life of this talented young actor to satisfy the expectations of their adolescent audience, never mind that some of us are grown-ups and expect better.