Pulse: Pursuits: 60-Second Critic: High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly

Grade: F
It seems a new Grace Kelly bio turns up every year, each promising to be the definitive look at our homegrown icon. Alas, this latest effort from veteran celeb biographer Spoto is about as piercing as 1983’s rosy-lensed Cheryl Ladd tele-bio. Forget scratching the surface: Spoto is too busy touting his “unprecedented access” (which appears to have been tea with the princess in the 1970s), with the result a fawning portrait about as deep as an 8-by-10 glossy. The definitive Kelly biography—one that captures and contextualizes the glamorous, complicated woman who craved her remote father’s love, mesmerized Hitchcock, and married a prince she barely knew—remains to be written. Sigh. Maybe next year.