First of all, watching the movie does not give you any information or help you understand what really happened during the tough years.

Second, even though I don't know much about Britney, I do know that a lot of the movie was inaccurate.

Horrible acting.

Horrible casting - the main character does not make you feel like you are watching something about Britney's life because she does not look like her AT ALL. And the JT character -- really?? From there it only got worse - I didn't realize the guy playing Kevin was supposed to be K-Fed.

Horrible storytelling - they jumped all over the place and skipped LOTS of important things (both good and bad).

Initially from the opening shots it felt like I was watching an SNL version of Britney's life ..From the cooky vibe, to the tacky accent to the overly hyped up 9 year old silly girl performance of the lead, I knew I was watching a joke and a disaster, but I was curious.

The girl has 0 sex appeal nor conviction nor even physical attractiveness (with all due respect to her off course) but its insulting to one the biggest pop icons in the world who's known for being sexy, sultry and physically perfect.

I assumed they could not use the real music for copy right infringement issues that could result in a law suit, and that is what happens when you make a movie about someone whose life is not even half way through being lived and does not approve of the story. That affected the story GREATLY ! Not a single Britney song lol

There are levels of bad, and I came into this with poor expectations, but it surprised me just how truly horrid it was, the acting the direction, the story layout, above all the lead, and everything in between. The amateurish direction, the poor production values and the terrible cast truly destroyed a powerful story into a messy, clichéd film.

An opportunity to recreate greatness and capture vulnerability, iconic moments of real life, style and inspiration missed.

Final Grade F-

I have to just say this as a loyal Britney fan. I want to do this in a way that does not disrespect all of the hard work that went into the film or speak negatively about any of the actors who portrayed their roles the best they could. In fact I'll say my positive things first. Natasha Bassett did an amazing job capturing the emotion in the scene where she portrayed Britney backstage at the 2007 VMA's hearing Justin say "tell her I said to break everything". She and the other actors also did a very good job creating the tension behind how bad the situation was when Britney was under Sam Lufti's "care" & a lot of the scenes that followed up to the moment Britney was hospitalized did really show how amazing her parents were basically saving Britney from a situation that was not going to end well. Now let's get to my issues. The movie was marketed, in large part by interviews with Natasha Bassett, as a "love letter" to Britney & an opportunity to show its audience how strong she was/is. Natasha even mentioned in a specific interview how impressed she was with the knowledge that Britney started her career with power by refusing to shoot the labels concept for the Baby One More Time video & creating the concept that went on to be one of the most iconic pop videos in history, obviously that didn't make the cut. As fans we know this & many other things like this & the movie completely FAILED Britney & us fans at telling the real story behind her fame. I think it was really a disgrace at how Britney was portrayed as this emotionally crippled shell of a person who was strung about her career by Larry & everyone around her, it's simply just not true. You guys had a real chance at doing Britney right & instead you followed a narrative that only victimized Britney's image more than the media already has. It was also a creep move to have Natasha put so much emphasis on the recreations of Britney's most iconic moments when you guys knew damn well you didn't do anything of the sort! The way the movie was hyped & described was NOTHING at all what it actually was which just feels like a slimy grab at ratings & a slap in the face to the audience that was tuning in to actually see something substantial. I really just think it's a shame that the creators of this movie & Lifetime didn't take the great opportunity they had to tell a legitimate story about one of pop music's most misunderstood stars. You guys just latched onto the same philosophy that the media took when they disgustingly mishandled Britney in 2005-2008 & did nothing to try & right that wrong. What's worse is that you lead us as an audience to believe that you were actually trying to do Britney & this story justice. Again, I do not want to take away from the actors work, whom I believe had good intentions & could've done the story a good amount of justice given the opportunity. I just can't believe Lifetime, the director & script writers had the audacity to parade this appalling movie to Britney, her family & her fans.

The movie was all over the place. The script seemed like it was written in a weekend. It never felt like a movie about the life of Britney Spears. The acting was just horrible. The casting was all wrong. The guy playing Justin Timberlake! Why?! I'm a 56 year old African American woman and would have been better cast to play Britney than Miss Bassett!

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning NO STARS End of Days

A made for TV biopic of the pop icon Britney Spears (Natasha Bassett), from starting out with her breakthrough single Baby One More Time in 1999, where she was shoved into the limelight by her pushy mother Lynne (Nicole Oliver) and domineering manager Larry Rudolph (Peter Benson), who both naively thought she was old and mature enough to handle such massive media exposure and pushed her to lie about her virginity to keep up an illusion, through to the trials and turbulence of her relationships with Justin Timberlake (Nathan Keyes) and Kevin Federline (Clayton Chitty), before a revealing 2008 documentary aired.

Sometimes, something can give you a really bad vibe, yet you still feel utterly compelled to see it. Your instinct can tell you it looks really bad, and you can see no end of bad reviews, and you can almost write a review before you've even seen it, but still you're still interested in the subject matter and you just have to see it yourself. While I've never been a massive fan of her music, something about Britney Spears has always captivated me and kept my attention, being such an icon of popular culture as she is. For all this, though, I've never gotten the feeling she was comfortable with this status, and so a dramatisation of her life, as inevitable as it was, was never something I thought she'd be happy about (and, from what's been said, that's definitely the case with this.)

Such a popular name is Britney, that a big studio could quite willingly have thrown its clout behind a production of her life, so why this no budget monstrosity is even in existence is ripe for question. And what little budget it must have had, as the terrible production values are in evidence from the opening credits, and from there, like a crashing plane whirling down from the sky, it just becomes an even bigger amateurish, terribly made mess. Lead star Bassett looks, and pretty much sounds, nothing like the real Britney, and her portrayal of her is just excruciating, as is Nathan Keyes's cringe-worthy performance as first love Justin. You never get the feeling you're watching a real life unfolding, just a corny, overblown childish imagining.

This is just the typical sort of thing you see on the Hallmark Channel/True Entertainment, only the worst kind of example, and one which you can really see from the outset and just trust your instincts on. NO STARS

Horrible Acting Horrible script Writing, Horrible actors to play the parts. Britney, Justin and Nsync actors looked nothing like the real ones and Britney singing could not even come from worst Britney impersonator. Seemed like lifetime tried too hard to make Britney look bad in movie cause she wanted no part of the horrible cheese work behind it. Epic failure by Lifetime F------

First of all, watching the movie does not give you any information or help you understand what really happened during the tough years.

Second, even though I don't know much about Britney, I do know that a lot of the movie was inaccurate.

Horrible acting.

Horrible casting - the main character does not make you feel like you are watching something about Britney's life because she does not look like her AT ALL. And the JT character -- really?? From there it only got worse - I didn't realize the guy playing Kevin was supposed to be K-Fed.

Horrible storytelling - they jumped all over the place and skipped LOTS of important things (both good and bad).

Where to begin? I feel as to not make my comment way too lengthy, as I could go on all day about this travesty, I'll briefly hit every key point:

• Acting/Casting - The main girl looks like she's maybe heard one Britney Spears song in her life, and like she's heard even less about the stars' life and career before signing onto the movie. She acts like the bubblegum Britney for the entire film, and it is extremely infuriating almost to the point of parody, like she doesn't even give a sh!t about the story she's trying to encompass even a little. She doesn't look like Britney, she certainly doesn't dance like Britney, she's not Britney... I'll sum up this portion of my review very quickly by saying that the only person that doesn't look miscast in this and doesn't do a terribly unfortunate job at their performance is the mom, who honestly could have pulled off Britney Spears better.

• Directing/Editing - Choppy, chop, chop mess. Everything felt so overly rushed and poorly edited. We're flying scene to scene with no time to grow any attachment to what's going on in front of us. You'd be better off watching the real life videos again of what Ms. Spears had to go through in order to get a better grasp on the situation, because along with no acting depth, there is no depth in how the director is trying to accomplish every single scene. Such poor direction.

• Facts/New information - Aside from a few things with Justin Timberlake I was unaware of, this movie doesn't bring anything new to the spotlight that has not already been covered by the media or by Spears herself. They're all jumbled facts and info to begin with, and I know it's supposed to just be a chronicle of her life so far, but as other commentators have stated, there were big parts of her life left out, both good and bad.

• Songs or lack thereof/Britney's own rejection - By far one of the worst factors of this movie? The shining star of the film did NOT want it being made, and it shows more than ever. The only music that it shows the woman portraying Britney singing in the film are songs that Britney covered from other artists. ("I Can't Get No Satisfaction, though it's the Rolling Stones version in this movie of course, and "I Love Rock 'n' Roll".) All the other songs? Generic, dumb, badly timed Pop written for the movie it seems that is not worthy of imitating the multiple, high-tempo, sexy Dance beat albums that have been so publicly adored and acclaimed by Ms. Spears. She did not want this movie being made, and I can see why. But aside from the fact that she knew the movie would be bad, it's just an insult altogether. Britney is a normal person like you are me. Yes, a staple icon, but a person nonetheless, who knows that if anything was going to come out documenting her life, she would want full hand in it, and she'd want it to be done with so much more care and understanding than these Neanderthals tried accomplishing.

In the end, the only reason I did not give it a 1 is because I made it all the way through it without vomiting, and surprisingly enough have seen a small handful of worse films. Britney Ever After, however, was a complete mess and useless effort on any and all levels.

"Britney Ever After" (2017 release; 90 min.) is a bio-pic of Britney Spears which premiered this weekend on Lifetime TV. As the movie opens, we are in 2008 and Britney is being interviewed in connection with her comeback. We then go back to "Florida 1998" when Britney is about to embark on her first tour, opening for *NSYNC. Britney soon reconnects with childhood friend Justin Timberlake and soon the two become an item. Meanwhile her mom and dad can't stop arguing about the smallest thing. At this point we are 15 min into the movie but to tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: first, this is an unauthorized bio-pic, made without any blessing or cooperation from the Britney camp. In and of itself this shouldn't stop the movie makers from putting together an interesting movie. Alas, they didn't. The movie heavily focuses on the Britney-Justin romance (taking more than a third of the movie), and then rushes through the rest of the material. The quickie Vegas wedding and subsequent dissolution is literally dealt with in a minute or so. Career highlights (such as VMA 2000) and lowlights (VMA 2007) flash by in no time. Worst of all is that there simply is no depth in any of the main characters, it all just happens. Not helping matters is that the movie producers don't have any original Britney music in the film, so the only and few performances we get are covers Britney did in her career (including the Stones' Satisfaction and Joan Jett's I Love Rock n Roll). All the other music is Britney-reminding club music. Natasha Bassett, the Australian actress playing Britney, does the best she can with the material given to here, but she can't save the movie from its strictly by-the-numbers feel (Bassett does the actual singing of the 2 covers mentioned earlier). Please note that, other than the very last minute of the movie, nothing beyond 2008 is covered.

As a Britney fan from the early days on, I was simply curious about this movie, and went into it without a lot of expectations. Even those low expectations weren't met. Given the tumultuous ups and downs Britney has had over the years, surely there is a great movie to be made one day about it all. Alas, "Britney Ever After" is not that movie. If you are a Britney fan, you will learn nothing new that you didn't know before. Viewer beware.

Lifetime Channel premiered tonight with the unauthorized biopic of musical pop sensation Britney Spears in this TV movie "Britney Ever After".

Australian actress Natasha Bassett stars in this film that tells important moments from story of Britney in flashbacks such as this small town girl's rise meteoric rise to becoming an iconic teen pop sensation;her love affair with Justin Timberlake and her marriage with Kevin Fenderline that both goes nowhere due to lack of fidelity; and the hard times brought by her family life such as the divorce of her parents, her father's constant drinking and being a mother to her two young children.

This Britney biopic was definitely lacking as far as story is concerned.With no involvement from Spears at all,the audience is limited to stories as told from rumors written from the tabloids.There is nothing new storywise as far as the musical sensation is concerned as everything in it are already known by many.

No question that being a tabloid material biopic,it was definitely high on melodrama. Natasha's famous Britney line,"I want someone who loves me because I am Britney Jean, not Britney Spears" will definitely become memorable to many viewers.On a positive note,Natasha does a satisfactory job of portraying Britney and delivering melodramatic lines.It was also more about scandals and personal setbacks that the musical diva was into.People who want to relieve them would definitely be satisfied with it.But viewers who want to learn more about Britney would be advised to skip this.

Terribly innacurate storyline, awful acting, and the caracters doesn't look like the real ones not even by far. Actually to be fair, the girl playing Britney does look a little bit like her when she smiles, and she does try hard to look like her, but she hardly gets close to it. I understand they can't use her music to it, but could at least create songs close to her style than the crap they came up with. And could dig deeper in the stories insteat of all those superficial happenings. Cleary the person who wrote it doesn't know Britney at all. Why haven't they asked a fan to write it? It definitely would be much better. Well...there goes 1 hour of my life which i'll never get back!

How do you make a movie about Britney Spears when you have none of her music available to you? Well, you get someone who looks nothing like her, you play loose and fast with the ways things happen and you air it on Lifetime.

Kevin Federline is played by a guy named Clayton Chitty, a name that I have fun yelling out loud because it's such a great stage name (it's actually his birth name). That's probably the nicest thing I can say about this film, one that looks and feels like a Saturday Night Live sketch stretched out to way too long of a running time.

Again, the only songs that are in this are her cover songs, like the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" and The Arrows' "I Love Rock 'n Roll." Sure, they reference her MTV Video Music Award performance, like when she had a snake during "I'm a Slave 4 U." But man, I know that the 1990's and 2000's were cheesy, but were they really this bad?

Not mentioned is the fact that Britney's video "From the Bottom of My Broken Heart" was directed by former adult director Gregory Dark, whose Dark Brothers team created such 1980's classics as New Wave Hookers and White Bun Busters. He'd go on to direct See No Evil, a slasher that starred WWE superstar Kane.

I do occasionally like to watch these cheesy Lifetime original films, and LMAO at them, make sarcastic comments along the way, etc.. and THIS is just one of those kinds of films! I don't actually have a lot to say about this, but saw it off the Lifetime Roku app the other day, and you know the story,about that pop sensation that is Britney Spears; we all lived it in the news. I don't think this movie proves anything other than, no matter how rich and famous you are, "white trash" is still "white trash"... LOL And they could've used more of the guy who played her disorderly, drunk dad, now THAT guy was a hoot! LMAO

Britney Ever After is May have a lot of Stuff missing but I enjoyed watching it for some reason.My Favriote character is Natsha Basset who played as "Britney Spears" she may not really look like Britney But I feel Like she connected with her.Like when she said it was a love letter to Britney I truly agreed it was love letter to her a Little bit but the film did have it's issues. Too much stuff missing,Not the real songs,too much sex,the unbalance of the characters and the wrong outfits.But I truly Think the movie was pretty good and I think you should watch it.

Sincerely,

Oliver Wady

I was actually looking forward to this, after seeing a behind the scenes look on Access Hollywood. I'm not a big Britney fan, but I heard her songs all through high school & college, & I figured why not? Boy, was I horribly wrong. And because this movie didn't have her blessing, they couldn't use any of her songs. So the only song that Britney sung that you actually see performed in the movie was 'I love Rock n Roll', which was originally a Joan Jett song.

And what was sad was that they didn't even get the basics of her life right. They threw some random things in there that probably didn't happen; dance off with Justin in a club, post breakup? The actress that played her, Natasha Bassett once said that this movie is like "a love letter to Britney". Really?? They made her look like a train wreck. Watching an E! True Hollywood movie would be a lot better to watch. If you haven't seen this, you haven't missed much.

This movie is ridiculous.

The writing is atrocious. It shows all the basic facts that were incredibly obvious, doesn't hit on any of the real blank spaces about Britney's life, and fills in any small blanks around said basic facts with shallow, empty interpretations.

It's like the writers have no concept of the human soul. Because Britney has no soul in this movie.

And if I hear the actress playing Lynn say "SUGAR" in that atrocious way one more time...

There are no words. From the horrific acting, the actors that looked nothing like the people they portrayed, and the obviously out of whack costumes and technology gaffs (iphones didn't exist in 2000), this film was a mess from start to finish. It wasn't funny, it wasn't accurate and wasn't memorable. A total embarrassment.

"Britney Ever After" was a heavily hyped "world premiere" on Lifetime of a film based, as one might suspect from the title, on the life and career of Britney Spears. One wonders why anybody would think the world needed a biopic of Britney Spears, but whatever management team is handling her these days has managed to create an image for her of unparalleled success, saying she's sold over 100 million records. Her Wikipedia page was obviously written by someone in her organization because it's a description of one overwhelming success after another, sort of like Donald Trump's depiction of his own business record, and there's only a passing nod to the bizarre set of acting-out behaviors in public that nearly sank her career and turned her into a national joke: "In 2007, Spears's much-publicized personal issues sent her career into hiatus. … Her erratic behavior and hospitalizations continued through the following year, at which point she was placed under a still ongoing conservatorship." Needless to say, those "much-publicized personal issues," "erratic behavior and hospitalizations" are the subject of this movie, written by Anne-Marie Hess but, alas, directed by Leslie Libman instead of her usual collaborator, Vanessa Parise.

The film begins with Britney's parents, alcoholic father James Spears (Matthew Harrison) and domineering mother Lynne Spears (Nicole Oliver), driving across country from their native Louisiana (Spears was actually born in McComb, Mississippi — and Natasha Bassett, who plays her, uses a quite strong proletarian Southern accent — but her parents moved to Kentwood, Louisiana when she was three) to Florida for what's supposed to be her big break: a chance to tour as opening act for the boy band 'NSync. There's nothing of her background before that, including her stint on the Mickey Mouse Club when Disney tried to revive that franchise in 1992; indeed, the opening is shot deliberately to make Our Britney look like just another showbiz wanna-be instead of someone with one foot already in the door and the other on its way. Britney is flabbergasted by having a whole tour bus set aside for her and her entourage, which is mainly her parents and manager Larry Rudolph (Peter Benson), who at the time the film begins had already signed her to Jive Records and sent her out on a tour of shopping malls to promote her upcoming first album. During the tour with 'NSync she meets and falls in love with their lead singer, Justin Timberlake (Nathan Keyes), but their relationship is on- and-off due to clashing schedules once she becomes big enough to headline — and also due to Britney's fierce possessiveness: when she can't get her man of the moment on the phone she mounts relentless attacks on his voicemail, becoming ever more desperate and pleading. (I remember watching a Grammy Awards telecast shortly after Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears broke up for good, and hearing him do a breakup song that was so bitter it sounded like he'd written it about her and the overall message was, "I'm glad I dumped that crazy bitch!")

The film kind of drones on and on as Britney responds to the breakup with an impulsive Las Vegas marriage to some guy (we only see him in bed with her and then in his underwear, as her parents and Rudolph tell him to go to the lobby of the hotel where they're staying so they can get the marriage annulled) and then into another marriage with one of her backup dancers, Kevin Federline (Clayton Chitty), which lasts long enough for her to give birth to twin sons — though given the ferocity of her touring schedule it's a wonder when she could have carried a pregnancy to term without it interrupting things and getting noticed by her fans and the omnipresent paparazzi (Libman and Hess are particularly good at dramatizing this plague loosed on the famous) — though almost as soon as the kids are born Kevin walks out on her. The film is framed as a documentary, supposedly being shot about Britney in 2008 and recounting her various performances at the MTV Video Music Awards — though the only people we see actually being interviewed for this film-within-the-film are Britney and her mom — and it recounts her "hell year" of 2007, in which her behavior becomes increasingly diva-ish and irresponsible.

Britney Spears always struck me as a Madonna wanna-be — though whereas Madonna was already a grown woman when she started and honed an elaborate act that included dancers and elaborate stage effects to highlight both her own sexuality and our whole society's ridiculous and contradictory attitudes towards sex in general, Britney started while she was still a teenager and her appeal was largely the pedophilic thrill of seeing someone at the cusp of the age of consent flaunt her body and her sexuality in such a precocious way. (Later Miley Cyrus, another refugee from the Disney reservation, would pull the same thing.) Britney Spears' inexplicable popularity was originally quite obviously an offshoot of the Madonna phenomenon — when I first saw her on TV I thought, "Who needs a G-rated version of Madonna?," and about her only transition was to stop trying to do a G-rated version and going all-out for the same sort of precocious sexuality and falling far short of her model. I was hoping that, even if Britney Spears the performer bores me, Britney Ever After might move me with the story of Britney Spears the human being — but it didn't because everything about that woman, including her traumas, is just dull.

Let's face it, if you do a lifetime TV movie about Britney Spears, without the authorization of her family or her estate, therefore not gaining permission to use any of her songs - you know how it's going to turn out.

For what it is, the actress who plays Britney was not bad. But everyone else, including the pacing, editing and directing, was as abysmal as you would expect.

Britney's live (albeit lip-synced) performances were iconic, so the lack of them due to the non-authorization of her songs is probably the worst thing.

Her meltdowns are intertwined with interviews of her feelings on it - but I had so much trouble trying to identify with her struggles that the film just got more and more annoying.

A wasted opportunity.

This movie actually shows a lot about how we treat celebrities in this country.. This movie lets us see Britney Spears as a real person. She struggles with mental illness , which is common, more and then we like to believe. 30% of America is affected by mental illness in one way or another. They did a good job at portraying her struggles and her difficulties and it made me think differently about who Britney Spears is. And I am happy that this movie shows her in a true light and that the world has judged her unfairly. Her struggle with the media was tragic and she was ill but she was just trying to be a good person and a good mother. This movie gave good insight into her struggle, the acting was good, the characters are great, and overall I enjoyed the movie as a whole. In fact after watching 30 minutes I couldn't stop watching it! So I hope everyone else is enjoying it as much as I did. It is definitely worth watching. :)

The first thing that struck me when first watching the movie was its cast. I didn't feel the female lead looked anything like Britney. I was surprised she was cast. I thought she may have talents elsewhere as to why she was cast. She really wasn't a great dance, she wasn't really dazzling or had impressive acting skills. This was not just the case for the lead, but for all the supporting actors as well, many did not look like the actual people (Justin, Felicia, Lynn, etc.). It was hard to believe the characters in the movie; I thought this was the main failure of the movie.

The movie did touch on many of the important events in Britney's life, her childhood and MMC years were exempt, but the story began when Britney was in the spotlight. So much of Britney's life has been recorded that it was all too much to fit into a 2-hr. film, but I thought they did a good job at picking and choosing which were more important. The movie didn't trash as much as they could have. They left out a bit: Britney driving with her child in her lap, Britney smoking while pregnant, Britney's nannies being the main caregivers for her children, Britney's relationship with paparazzo Adnan Ghalib was completely left out, heavy drug use with ex, meth, coke was omitted, Britney not knowing that her sibling was pregnant, I think the conservatorship that she is still under may have not been mentioned. There was also no shots of a pregnant Britney. Although, they did leave some things they did elude too these happening, which was a good way of exposing the trouble that Britney was in without direct visuals.

The ending, they wrapped up quickly. It took a while for Britney's comeback. After her family took over again, she still appeared sad, robotic, unrecognizable from plastic surgery, and she couldn't move like she used to. She seemed very out of place. That was never mentioned in the movie.

Overall, I think the acting was poor and cheesy, many characters miscast. The biography seemed accurate for the most part from her early career, to her rise, to her fall, to her uprising. Being a huge fan of Britney and having followed her life in the tabloids, I enjoyed it and remembered reading a lot of the events that the movie portrayed. A negative, I suppose, is that there was nothing new that the movie provided. I've already read, heard, or watched the events depicted in the movie. I found the movie watchable for a fan, but nothing amazing.