Loose Women stars branded the new Amy Winehouse movie “heart-wrenching” today, amid growing criticism that hiring an actress to portray her struggles after her death could have been inappropriate. The morning after the premiere of the divisive film, which stars Marisa Abela as Amy – Dame Kelly Holmes debated whether it was “disrespectful to her memory”.

“I feel sad watching… [Amy] hasn’t had artistic license in it, so it sort of wrenches,” she grimaced. “It’s someone who has such an immense talent and she’s not with us [anymore].”

Although Kelly declared the movie “heart-wrenching” – like previous documentary material about her – Coleen wasn’t convinced. “I don’t necessarily agree that it’s disrespectful – people were more disrespectful when she was alive by hounding her relentlessly,” she contradicted.

The pair’s comments come just hours after the film was branded “poor” in one of the first reviews to hit the newsstands. An Evening Standard reviewer had blasted: “A poor, poor piece of film-making… The final scene, in particular, with its completely and utterly baseless, sensationalist implications, made me physically gasp in horror.”

Her singing was also blasted by multiple reviewers, with Marisa previously admitting that she’d landed the lead role “before anyone even knew if she could sing or not”. She added in an interview on the Jonathan Ross Show that she’d taken hours of singing lessons to prepare herself for taking on the challenge of replicating Amy’s enviable voice.

Viewers have also taken to Twitter (X) to blast the movie and brand it a “parody”, with one saying: “Just saw a clip from the Amy Winehouse biopic and it’s worse than I imagined… this genuinely feels disrespectful.”

However, reviews haven’t all been bad, with the Guardian declaring Marisa’s performance to be “thoroughly engaging”.

The actress, who at 27 is exactly the age Amy was when she tragically died, has revealed that she grew up in the same neighbourhood as the late star, too.

Prior to taking on the role, she’d been a notable performer in BBC Two and HBO’s Industry, as well as the Sky One series COBRA.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on Loose Women today, Coleen shared the heartbreaking friendship betrayal she’d suffered in the past when she was suddenly “cut out” of a friend’s life for no apparent reason.

She confessed that she’d been so close to the unnamed woman that she “couldn’t imagine life” without her, only to be abandoned completely when she moved just a short distance away.

“I just never saw or heard from her again. She moved 20 minutes away from where we were and just cut me off,” she lamented, adding that they’d previously seen each other on a daily basis up to that point.

“I asked her: ‘Have I done anything wrong?’ She said, ‘No I’ve just moved’ and I was like, ‘You don’t move your friendship with you!'” Coleen exclaimed as the audience laughed.

However, Kelly chimed in with the discussion to suggest that friendship failures and being betrayed or “manipulated” was a good learning experience.

“Why do you connect with that person? Sometimes it’s to grow and sometimes to learn a lesson yourself,” she earnestly declared.