Mommie Dearest

Rating:
Summary: A Guilty Pleasure!
Review: Great to own! Even if there are no notable Special Features (how hard could it have been to get Diana Scarwid or Mara Hobel to do a commentary track!!??), this unintentionally hilarious and over the top film will satisfy Crawford and Dunaway fans with her legendary performance, shoddy production values (yes, that is a bottle of Fantastick and yes, that is the kitchen set reused from HAPPY DAYS) and flimsy dialogue too rampant to begin quoting in this limited space.

Get it and start throwing theme parties!

Rating:
Summary: Hilariously, Sickeningly, Real
Review: Joan Crawford, as portrayed by Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest, so reminds me of my own crazy, violent, mother when I was growing up, that I howl with laughter and quiver with fear upon watching it. I don't think Faye Dunaway's acting is over the top. I think this CHARACTER, the people who are like that, are over the top. I rate this movie highly for being a realistic portrait of that kind of person, and therefore compelling, horrifying and hilarious. Just like life with my own "Mummy".

Rating:
Summary: Joan Crawford "revealed"
Review: I am not sure where to begin this review. But I will begin by saying that Joan Crawford off screen was pure hell. Her adoptive children, boy and girl, went through so much emotional turmoil, phyical and psychological abuse, with such horror, that I pray they were able to survive the invisible as well as hidden scars and allow them to heal.

What I learned from this movie is that the actor's spotlight mattered most, publicity was so important to Ms. Crawford, that adopting the two children was with intent to be cruel, abusive, and with total disregard for harm done to their emotional, psychological, educational, social, and physical handicaps in developments.

My heart goes out to Christina and Christopher Crawford. May God's guiding light, inner strength, and everlasting peace be upon the two of you and all children who have and may be undergoing similar circumstances.

Mr. Diego Rodriguez

Rating:
Summary: Watch For Faye Dunaway's Performance
Review: "Mommie Dearest" is a camp classic, and deservedly so. The dialogue is awful, the directing is awful, and Faye Dunaway's Joan Crawford makeup makes her closely resemble Dr. Frank N. Furter from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." However, I watched this film again recently, and while it does have several scenes that go so over the top they orbit Jupiter, it isn't that bad of a movie.

Faye Dunaway's performance has been maligned over the years, and this is the movie that destroyed her career in one fell swoop. But it is a great performance. Dunaway excels at playing Joan Crawford, a monstrous mother who is frighteningly out of control. A lesser actress might have tried to tone down Crawford, but Dunaway takes the character to extremes that no other sane woman would dare. Her most infamous scenes, the "no wire hangers . . . ever" and her midnight garden rampage in which she tells her daughter to "give me the axe," are nevertheless examples of powerful acting. Dunaway digs deep to deliver the intense performance she does, and the child abuse scenes are disturbing because of her. It is the right performance, but it's in the wrong movie. Frank Perry's direction is so off that he changes what could have been a great movie into a camp howler. Fault him for the laughs, not Faye Dunaway.

Diana Scarwid also does a decent job as the older Christina Crawford. Character actor Howard Da Silva is also good in his brief role of Louis B. Mayer. Otherwise, the acting is forgettable. "Mommie Dearest" does have a lot of laughs in it, and it is a bad movie. In this mishmash Faye Dunaway gives a performance better than everything that surrounds her.