I found this movie's title to be very misleading. Rather than A Life in Eight Albums I saw Eilleen: The early years. Less a story and more a poorly assembled collection of glimpses that the viewer is roughly shoved through. Many simplified and stereotyped. It comes across as an unsophisticated low budget attempt to show moments from the story of the woman who will become Shania. The film hops and drags through the first hour. While it does move better towards the end, it is not a significant improvement. It's occasionally hard to follow what is happening or who people are unless you have some familiarity with her early life already. Hard to stick it out to the end. A few of the acting performances are good, but few are consistent. The sound is of decent quality, but the music used is basic and repetitive.

Despite some clever moments and a spunky performance by Meredith Hamilton, this film was doomed to failure by disjointed scripting and direction. It was such a structural mess that one can almost sense the editor's panic as he scrambled to establish some sort of order and flow to scene after scene that neither ended nor built towards a plot development or theme of consequence. The repetitive episodic structure of our heroine experiencing some frustration or tragedy and immediately retiring to her room to mumble lyrics and stumble over chords (to what, not incidentally, sound like really bad, adolescent songs) was tiresome the second time through, let alone after the seventh or eighth time. "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", sung about five times during the film, was Twain's through line, but that emotion could as easily represent the mental state of the bewildered viewer.A particular black hole sucking the dramatic life out of the film was writer Shelley Eriksen's pen paralysis when it came to romance. While we often find films side-tracked by the paradox of the needless, requisite love interest, it's clear that Twain's music and persona are, curiously, as much about the importance of love and family as feminism and ambition, so getting these relationships into frame is certainly germane. Puzzlement, however, pretty much defines the response of the viewer to any of the relationships depicted here, whether the unexplained marital difficulties of her parents or Twain's own serial lovers, who drop from sight so peremptorily one can be forgiven for suspecting that it was because the actors were on one day contracts. Megan Follows must have wondered how she got involved in this project, though truth to tell, she has some awkward moments herself in a generally solid performance. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt, though - the script is so underwritten that several fine actors struggle to bridge the gap between their characters and the meagre words left to them. However, Jerry Ciccoritti's toneless direction is as much to blame; scenes are emotionally flat either through the confusion of the actors left to sort through this mess themselves or Ciccoritti's inability to convey a sense of where and how he felt the scenes must progress.Twain has a classic rags to riches and country heartache story to tell (cranked up a notch since this film's release by her recent split from producer/husband Mutt Lange). I hope somebody sees the potential and has the wherewithal to enlist Twain's aid in getting it right.

Alrighty, this TV movie was entertaining, I'll give it that. But this was does behind Shania's back. Had they told her about it, the information would have been much more accurate and there would have been more of it. There were a lot of holes in this movie. Since I'm a fan I didn't feel like I was clueless, but my poor father who doesn't know as much as I do, was a little lost. There were big gaps between things, and with her father being abusive, and making Sharon move out multiple times there must have been more to it then "she got fed up with his bull poop". There is more to that, I certainly wouldn't leave my family and husband because I was fed up. The blanks are too noticeable but I caught them and was a little upset, because I was pretty excited when I first heard about it.All in all, it was OK. But that's all it was.

if Shania: A Life In Eight Albums is accurate in the details or not, since I am but a fan of Shania. To me, it depicted a pretty good version of her life, having read books and articles about her.The acting was okay, it seemed unnatural at parts which made the film awkward to watch. Especially scenes between the mother and "teenage-Shania". Overall, I think the whole surreal story was generally very intriguing. The actress that played Mary Bailey was great and really made her character the maternal figure that was lacking in the film.The best part I thought was the beginning, where the youngest version of Shania was singing in a bar in the middle of the night. First of all, WOW! What a talented singer! Second, it was the only acting that seemed real. Mother pressuring young country star potential to be the best she can be. And from what I've read, it was the most accurate. There were a couple undeveloped plot-lines such as when the mother left home in a rage of fury and was back in a matter of scenes sitting on the couch laughing.In my honest opinion, this film failed to compare to what Shania is now, and if I had filmed it, I would've taken a completely different approach to make the star's history as important as her present life because it's what got her where she is now. It was just really difficult to compare this to one of the greatest musicians of our generation.