Avis Metacritic

Ms. Dean relates Lamarr’s ventures, those onscreen and off, with savvy and narrative snap, fluidly marshaling a mix of original interviews and archival material that includes film clips, home movies and other footage.

First-time director Dean does an excellent job of marshalling old source material, setting the scene for an account of Lamarr's life on- and off-screen.

Recognition (and compensation) proved elusive in Lamarr’s lifetime, but in this marvelous documentary, a brilliant woman — “I’m a very simple, complicated person” — finally gets her due.

But every few years, something like “Bombshell” comes along to remind us, as we look up her credits on IMDb on our iPhone or Droid, that we should never under-estimate the great beauties among us. A lot of them are a lot more than just a pretty face.

Lamarr wasn’t without demons, but to look at the entirety of her life in context along its volatile trajectory of highs and lows is to understand she was a victim of chauvinistic times.

It’s a totally serviceable, if disappointingly uncinematic, film about a singular celebrity.

What makes "Bombshell" intriguing is not just Lamarr's gift for invention, it's also what a fiery individualist she was, someone who had no regrets about her eventful life ("You learn from everything"), not even its racy, tabloid elements.

Never taken seriously in her lifetime – and manipulated by powerful men like studio mogul Louis B. Mayer (sound familiar?) – Lamar never got the recognition she deserved for inventing what became a cornerstone of the wireless technology used today in WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS.

Too much of “Bombshell” skims over Lamarr’s more troubling and troubled aspects to paint her in somewhat stock terms as the victim of keep-her-on-that-pedestal misogyny.

The film curiously steers toward surmising Hedy Lamarr's psychological state as it pertained to love and pleasure.