Rating: 
Summary: Nothing funny about this movie...
Review: I saw this movie as a teen with my mom, & in a way it became our "Mother/Daughter bonding movie" as twisted as it sounds. It is one of my favorite movies of all time & I think this movie doesn't get even an ounce of the respect it deserves from reviewers.I have never read the book, so there's a possibility of missing some "Big Picture", but I really enjoyed the story they peiced together. I never seem to be bored while watching this movie, & I have never gotten tired of seeing it either. I thought the acting was done beautifully by all characters, especially the two main characters (the younger Christina included). Faye Dunaway really pulls off a performance that still gives me chills when I see the face she makes as she's leaving Christina to scrub the bathroom floor. Alot of reviewers have talked about how "funny" this movie is, but I find nothing funny about it. It has the usual jokes now & then, but truely I've never even cracked a smile while watching this movie, it was never meant to be funny. There is nothing funny about child abuse, alcoholism, or any of the other themes shown in this movie...
Rating:
Summary: Depressing!
Review: This movie depressed me! How she treated that poor child! UGH! I wanted to slap her!
Rating:
Summary: A Terribly sad movie..
Review: This is my favorite drama movie but,it is so very sad that someone would do that.I never have seen a movie with Joan Crawford in it but, I have seen pictures of her and Faye Dunawy's make-up atrist make it seem like that was really Joan Crawford.It is a good movie despite the fact that those really happened.
Rating:
Summary: The Story of My Life
Review: I am 32 years old, and I call my mother "Mommie Dearest" because she is in many ways the same and in many ways worse than the Joan Crawford character in this movie. When I got away from home and went to college, no one believed how awful my mother was. The same stuff... I'd come home from work at 6am after the late night shift and she'd insist on vacuuming my bedroom at 9am. She insisted I was adopted (I wasn't), locked me out of the house almost every night because she didn't believe me that I had soccer practice or whatever (even when I was 12), locked me out in the rain to teach me lessons, threw food at me at the dinner table, yelled at me for helping her take in the groceries, put me in the backyard in my high chair as a toddler so the neighbors could watch me when I wasn't eating my food, put my hand on the stove burners, threw all my clothes out the window, didn't allow me to have a bedroom door, and said all the same stupid lines in this movie. My mother made me watch this movie when it came out because she wanted to show us that we kids deserved to be treated poorly (she loves Mommie Dearest). My sister was tied to her bed with a jump rope because she wanted to go play with her friends after school, and my mother didn't want her to. Seeing my sister there was the saddest moment of my life. My mother physcially hit me and abused me every day from a toddler to 18, and even some more after that. At the age of 32, I have nightmares for months because of her. We don't deserve to be called "liars" who have "campy mothers". This movie is the story of my life.
Rating: 
Summary: Psycho Mommy!
Review: Joan Crawford's adopted daughter brought us this true story about her experiences with her obsessive-compulsive and violent mother. When Joan learns that her fame and money is quickly falling, she takes out her frusterations on her poor daughter. I must admit that some of the scenes were downright hilarious. Like the scene where she wakes her daughter up at 2 am yelling that the bathroom isn't clean and goes psycho with the Comet cleanser. Seriously, if she was my mom I would have been laughing my ass off at her constantly! And if she would have beat ME with a wire clothes hanger for no reason, on boy! I would have kicked her f****** teeth in! And if she would have cut MY hair off, I would have ripped hers out! If she was going to turn into this psycho mommy from hell then I would turn into a "bad seed" girl and scare her away! It's a good thing she gets revenge at the end!
Rating:
Summary: Faye Dunaway's performance as over the top as her eyebrows
Review: Although unintentionally hilarious, one cannot help to revel in the madness of movie queen Joan Crawford's, out of control perfectionism. Though sloppily edited (it's obvious many scenes were omitted that effect the continuity of the film), it still is a highly entertaining study of one of the greatest actress's in Hollywood's, behind the scenes so-called "horror show," with her adopted children...Most notably her daughter Christina. Faye Dunaway is at her campiest best, showing us the many sides of a very abusive, yet very insecure("They say she's getting old." "Box office poison." "When You say Mommie dearest, I want you to mean it")complex woman. Dunaway steals just about every scene in this film, chewing at every ounce of the scenery she can muster. The infamous wire hangers moment, although admittedly humorous at times, has got to be the most chilling thing since Linda Blair's head spinning in the 1973 film, the Exorcist. The kabuki make-up alone that Dunaway sports is horrifying in itself...Just over look the flaws, and sit back and enjoy this rollercoaster ride of a movie.
Rating: 
Summary: A trainwreck with eyebrows
Review: This movie has plenty of screamingly funny scenes. However, once it was over, I felt more sorry for Joan than her daughter. Inaccuracies aside, taking the movie just as entertainment, I thought that Joan was poorly used by both Mayer and her longtime lover in the film. Mayer in the film came across as pretty heartless; I'd want to go home and tear something up as well! And her charming boyfriend! Why didn't the jerk stay with her outside the restaurant when her fans wanted autographs, and why did he have to constantly make derisive comments about her? The conflicts she had with her daughter looked more like an extreme personality clash than anything else. And where did Christina suddenly get that Southern accent? Her acting made me want to crawl under the carpet, especially the scene where she performs a bit from Antigone in school. "Understaayyyand.." Yikes! Aside from Faye Dunaway (except for winning the Least Believable Eyebrows In Cinematic History award), the whole movie was a disgrace. It does earn the 3 stars for being howling funny, and I'll watch it again, for the trainwreck value.
Rating:
Summary: Unfailingly hilarious
Review: Devotees of Christina Crawford's own particular type of self-pity will doubtless hate this move and everything it stands for. The rest of us see 'Mommie Dearest', the adaptation from the life story of the daughter of a Hollywood Legend, for what it is - a hilarious mistake. Intended, I am certain, as a harrowing and insightful portrait into the stark effects of alcoholism and child abuse, 'Mommie Dearest' instead manages to keep us rolling in the aisles for almost all of its 2+ hours, thanks in no small part to atrocious acting, lousy writing and some of the most irresponsible fact-interference I've ever seen. The movie opens with Joan Crawford (played really rather well by Faye Dunaway, but since the rest of the picture is so bad, we tend not to notice this) desperate to have a child. Enter the hapless Christina (who was initally named after Joan herself, and later re-named, a fact casually omitted by the scriptwriters) and her appalling collection of platinum-blonde fright-wigs. The professional and personal decline of Ms. Crawford's MGM career begins shortly afterwards, and she sublimates her rage through heavy drinking, heavy-handed discipline and even heavier eyebrows. For a movie based on the personal memoirs of Christina Crawford, it's still a mystery why the screenplay gives her such a small role in the film. This really could have been re-named 'All About Joan', with more than its fair share of clearly-imagined Christina-free episodes - the Pepsi-Cola board room, Joan's meetings with LB Meyer, and a host of pre-Christina exchanges between Joan and various adoption/childcare employees - leading us to believe that the facts from the original book have been severely dressed up by a number of hackneyed Hollywood writers' cliches. For an autobiographical adaptation, the amount of key scenes that occur without Christina seems unlikely. This is 'Mommie Dearest's first failing as a serious movie, in that it disregards the main character, instead latching onto an over-bearing and flashy secondary character (Joan) for thrills. The second major flaw with this picture is the truly dire quality of acting, displayed by almost all the performers. Dunaway as Crawford is good, for the most part, and Harry Goz's tiny cameo as Alfred Steele, the Pepsi magnate, is well-acted, but the rest of the cast seem, by turns, extraordinarily wooden and overpoweringly camp. Take the actresses playing the part of Christina - Mara Hobel as young Tina is grating and hammy, while Diana Scarwid as Tina the Older is monotonous and frigid. Indeed, so emotionless is Scarwid's performance as the victim of such a dreadful torrent of abuse, that we begin to wonder if the allegations of drug and alcohol abuse extend beyond Crawford to her young daughter. Was Tina high, too? In contrast to this, Scarwid's performances in the more emotional scenes ('I'm-not-one-of-your-FANS', 'Does she? Does she?') seem implausible to the point of ridicule. Similarly horrible performances come in the shape of the sublimely confused Rutanya Alda as Joan's long-suffering maid Carol-Anne, and the absolutely dreadful Steve Forrest as Greg Savitt, a man whose face, much like his acting ability, seems to be composed entirely of wood, and only one emotion. However, it's the contrast between different poles of emotion, so very badly acted, that gives this movie its unintentional success - 'Mommie Dearest' is the original 'So Bad It's Good' picture. The by-now infamous Wire Hanger and Ax sequences take on a ghoulish and comedic twist, with Dunaway chewing up and spitting out every available ounce of scenery, while vole-faced Hobel looks on, inappropriately muttering 'Jesus Christ' at the tender age of eight years old. The fight scene when Joan removes the adult Christina from school is a movie classic; so badly acted, and so poorly scripted, that we end up cheering Joan on, truly hoping that she does indeed strangle the hapless, hopeless Scarwid. All in all, 'Mommie Dearest' is an artistic failure but a comedy triumph. Die-hard Joan fanatics will feel somewhat vindicated, too, by the terrible embellishment of real-life events. The whole plotline smacks of personal vendetta - and, having read the actual book, I can see why... it's full of the 'Poor Me' syndrome - and it fails to pack a dramatic punch of any sort. It's a glamorous, glorious trip down Hammy Lane, and one for anyone who enjoys a good belly-laugh. Except that's not what poor Christina had intended. Oh well.
Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly good in a funny way
Review: I thought the preformance by Faye was great & there were some hilarious scenes. I think the reason people can see it as funny is because enough time has passed. This is an interesting film about a wacko artist & her bratty daughter. Joan was obviously not all there- but it is not difficult to see how Christina antagonized her. You can't really argue with someone in Joan's mental state & Christina should have realized that. Granted, Joan would not have been my 1st choice for a mom, but at least she's not as bad as "Sybil" which I know isn't saying much.
Rating:
Summary: Has become a classic because it is so bad
Review: People were actually supposed to take this movie seriously when it was first released in 1982. Released to coincide with the popularity of the book of the same name, it ended up sending over-acting to a completely different level. Enter Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford, Hollywood star and an adoptive mother of four children whom she likes to abuse away from the limelight (Note: film only mentions two children). Faye Dunaway portrayed Joan in such a camp, over-the-top way that it is impossible to take her seriously! Christina Crawford (the daughter who wrote the book) rejected the film saying that they altered facts. Yet the film has become a classic. Why? Faye Dunaway's over the top performance, and Crawford's everlasting fan base! This movie is a guilty pleasure. Worth seeing just to see how Faye Dunaway over-acts, and how she does NOT look like Joan Crawford. And shame on Christina Crawford for destroying Joan's image.
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