Rating: 
Summary: "Why must everything be a contest?"
Review: For the first time in widescreen format, Mommie returns to home video looking much better than it ever has. (The laserdisc and tape were just awful.)
And this improved image makes the film better. The sets look less cheesy, and Dunaway's miriad facial expressions are there for the wonderment.
Sure there are all the great quotes, but when all is said and done, the film is a bit more complex than it seems. There are times when you think, Joan is just a raging alcoholic who liked to buy babies and change their names, but there are other times when you think, this kid deserves it . . . almost. More could have been done to make this release better. How about Faye commentary? The Hurrell photographs she did for Life magazine? The photo galllery is mostly comprised of film frames. Too bad. But you gotta have the disc anyway.
Rating:
Summary: just simply the best camp
Review: Okay so what if Joan Crawford beat her kids. Okay so what. Didn't people do that back then. I really believe parents should start again. Except not that extreame as the wire hangers. They hurt. Trust me they do. I have read some reviews on this film and believe me spanking your kids and beating them is not abuse. Being cruel to your kids is. Going out of your way to hurt and humilate children is abuse. Not spanking and beating. It's called dicipline. Anyways I myself would have beat Christina myself after so many times telling her "NO WIRE HANGERS", AND "EAT YOUR STEAK", AND "WHO DO YOU THINK YOUR TALKING TO", AND "YOU LOVE TO MAKE ME HIT YOU", and worst of all why the hell did that brat not get it through her thick head that her mother had a short fuse. If that was me I would have done what I was told, and shut my mouth and just waited till I was eight-teen then got the hell of there. Will or no will. I hate to admit it but the choking scene is my favorite. I really think I would have done the same thing Joan Crawford did. Okay lets be honest. You get a call from a school your paying your kid to go to and have the headmistress tell you your "Darling Cristina" was found with a boy doing some necking in a barn on top of some hay. Your humilated and the headmistress tells you it was innocent and your mad as hell and your driving home. By now you really need a drink but your out. Now your more mad but...your daughter knows where to get some. After stopping to get some and drive home you tell your daugter your doing an interview and for her not to f..k it up. But shes does by calling you a lier front of the interviewer and then she has the gall to keep talking back after she sees you are mad and she keeps going as to show you she will not back down even though you have murder in your eyes and your just waiting for her to say the wrong thing. Your just waiting for her to say "COME ON!!! SLAP ME OR KILL ME I JUST WANT TO SEE YOU TRY!!! I would have burst a vessel or just let go and done what she did. That is such a classic scene. Just watching Faye Dunaway is great as she plays the hell of the role of Joan Crawford is a guilty pleasure. It is actually errie to watch. She played the role with relish. Whatever happened to the little girl who played the young Cristina? I never saw her again. I wonder if she had to go to a pyschatrist like Linda Blair did after playing the little girl in "The Exorcist". Faye was scary in the wire hanger scene. She was a nightmare come to life.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Guilty Pleasure
Review: Okay, this is not exactly Best Picture material, but it is definately a bona-fide camp classic. Faye Dunaway's eerie, over the top performance is unforgetable and the quotes are great. The first hour of the movie is sheer entertainment, but the second seems less exciting and interesting, though it is made up for with the hilarious ending! If you are in the mood for trash with a touch of class, Mommie Dearest is the one!
Rating: 
Summary: Christina eat your dinner.
Review: Faye Dunaway is Oscar-quality. Her performance is flawless and riveting. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the actress who played the grown Cristina Crawford. Her performance is wooden, mundane, and unendearing. The movie itself is an interesting look into the personal life of one Hollywood's biggest stars of yesteryear. It's well-edited and generally flows well. I'm unsure if the movie/book was meant to attract sympathy for Cristina Crawford or not. I imagine it was, because if it wasn't what would've been the point of showing a normal homelife? So if that's the case, then it seems to fail at certain points. Showing a young Christina, for example, refusing to eat her dinner does nothing to evoke sympathy for her nor does it evoke disdain for Joan as it seems it's meant to. At times, it seems Christina was more of a brat than Joan was a poor mother. It's also interesting to note that the other Crawford children have denied Christina's allegations. At any rate, Joan is shown to be a poor mother most of the time, with a good deal of screaming and crying permeating the film. A unique look into the personal life of Joan Crawford and worth viewing if only for that reason alone.
Rating:
Summary: "Yes 'Mommie' what??" It's about time!
Review: This movie is a wonderful dysfunctional CLASSIC. It's about time the publishers gave in to creating a DVD version -- why the reluctance?
Rating:
Summary: Diary of a Mad Housekeeper
Review: When my friends and I heard that Faye Dunaway was going to star in the film version of Christina Crawford's hatchet piece on her mother, we were waiting with bated breath. The film did not disappoint my little band of "camp hounds". We were treated to a glossy, trashy, laughable banana-split of Hollywood kitsch-topped off by Faye Dunaway's larger-than-life, frightening, grand guignol performance as La Joan. And now, 20 years later, this now-classic trash classic has been released on DVD. The picture quality and sound are excellent, although Henry Mancini's fervid music in the "rose garden" scene, where Joan hacks all the rose bushes to the ground, is gone. Why? Aside from this musical omission, the film is there in all its lovely, trashy splendor. Bill Malley's beautiful art direction and Irene Sharaff's remarkable costumes deserve special mention, because they convey the essence of "the real Joan" better than the mediocre script. Joan had a "thing" for the color blue, and it's there, again and again, in Ms. Dunaway's remarkable, historically-accurate wardrobe, and in the set of her beyond-immaculate house. The script has, in the words of screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski ("Ed Wood", "The People vs Larry Flynt") the usual "composite characters", such as Rutanya Alda's lifelong faithful servant/slave Carol Ann (there WAS no such person), and Steve Forrest's Greg Savitt (a composite of lawyer Greg Bautzer and Philip Terry, Joan's 3rd husband). There are also inconsistencies in time (Christina was only 4 when Joan was "let go" from MGM-Mara Hobel, who played little Christina in the film, was about 8 or 9 years old). But, such little things are unimportant when discussing this film. Howard Da Silva's performance as MGM head, monster father-figure Louis B. Mayer, is very good, although one wishes that there were more "celebrity" appearances in the film-can you imagine what the filmmakers could have done with Clark Gable, or Bette Davis? And then, of course, there is Faye Dunaway. Ms. Dunaway is reputed to have a practically nonexistent sense of humor, which makes her performance as Crawford even funnier. The fact that she took her performance SO SERIOUSLY (as did the real Joan), coupled with the cliched script and Frank Perry's horror-movie direction, only adds to the general hilarity. Just listen to Big Chief Dunaway's ranting in the infamous "No wire hangers" scene-she sounds like a berserk Chief Dan George on the warpath ("No wy-yuh-han-guhs!") Or Faye's cross-eyed stare into space after she growls to Christina, "You figure it out!" Or Faye fondling her ankle-strapped shoe-clad leg while awaiting her "stud of the evening". Or her VERY drunk performance on "The Secret Storm" when she "stood in" for her hospitalized daughter. ("Could you, um-could you....call?") I could go on and on. I read an interview with Ms. Dunaway where she called this film a "bad career move, a bad persona", as several, if not all, of her subsequent roles were variations on this performance ("Evita Peron", "Supergirl", "Casanova", etc.) where she portrayed "sinister women with power" Maybe, Faye, but us conoisseurs of camp don't love you any less! For those of you who haven't seen this film, maybe you should read Christina Crawford's book first. It is a book written in fury, about how the public is shown only one side of fame-the glamorous part. The fact that Crawford was a woman who came from an unhappy childhood, limited education, and was under pressure to be "walking perfection" (much of it self-imposed) and its wearing, harmful effect on those close to her, was something that just was not shown to the general public in Hollywood's Golden Age. Detractors of Christina's book, many of whom knew Crawford, never refuted the reports of Joan's harshness towards her children-just the fact that Christina "Had the bad taste" to mention them! But, getting back to the film, if you want to see a handsome-looking, hilariously kitschy movie in the "Valley of the Dolls" tradition, then "Mommie Dearest" should be your glass of Pepsi!
Rating:
Summary: No "Family" Man's DVD Collection is Complete Without This!
Review: I have to say that after many years of waiting for this film to come out on DVD, I was disappointed that it had no "extras." There had to be some deleted scenes that could have been included or a commentary from Faye Dunaway or Christina Crawford. But, alas, we get only the film itself and what a piece of work it is. In her autobiography, Faye Dunaway said of her performance as Joan Crawford "I was really proud of it." Was she high when she said that ? Faye plays Crawford in such an unhinged manner that the film becomes a laugh-riot of bad acting and unintentionally hilarious scenes. The axe scene, the breakup of Joan and her boyfriend due to the fact that he said she was old and drunk, the Pepsi Boardroom cat fight, and of course the wire hangers and bathroom cleaning escapade are all legendary. A scary footnote: I was watching this mess with a date and they became quite disturbed that I was hooting and hollering throughout..they said quite seriously "I LIVED THIS." They were dumped shortly thereafter.
Rating:
Summary: "No DVD Extras"! A great Film But...
Review: I love this movie, it has to be one of the best in camp. View this together with "Showgirls" for one fun and very twisted evening. Though I'm very happy to see this classic on DVD, I'm very disappointed with Paramount Home Video's release...there should have been extra's. Like original interviews... maybe one with the real Christina! Deleted Scenes, Would have been a great addition and from watching this film you know there has to be alot! I think Paramount Home Video is the last major studio that hasn't picked up the total point of DVD's ... Oh well! ... "Isn't this fun?" - Joan
Rating:
Summary: Fury, thy name is Faye!
Review: Okay- here is one that will keep you up at night. Faye Dunaway is deeply scary as Joan Crawford in this way-over-the-top screen adaptation of Christina Crawford's vituperative memoir. The opening scene sets the camp-fest tone: we are treated to a loooong sequence of Miss Crawford preparing for her movie shoot, which involves her scrubbing her face, elbows, and nails with what appears to be a Brillo pad before dousing them in boiling water and iced alcohol (I defy you not to think "morning cocktail, Joan?). At the end of the sequence, her face is revealed to us- Faye Dunaway with big hairy commas for eyebrows. Faye's ferocious, wildly over-the-top performance seems to have been based on the conceit that Joan Crawford never had a moment off screen that she wasn't acting- except perhaps when she was being crazy and beating the kids or chopping down trees. There are a lot of conflicting reports on the character of Miss Crawford, some painting her as an ogre, some as an angel. Like most people, she most likely was something in between. It looks as if Frank Perry told Faye to keep Joan's performances in "Straight Jacket"' "Possessed" and "Queen Bee" at the front of her mind at all times, and act accordingly. Like these movies, she is supported by sub-B movie actors (Steve Forrest?!?), who manage to look like they are in fear for their lives throughout the whole movie. They should have been afraid for their careers. Nobody can find the abuse of a child funny, but how can you not want to smack the gooey, calculating little Mara Hobel? The snivelling, robotic Diana Scarwid isn't much better (and her first appearance her southern accent is really jarring: "ah unduhstaaaaand") Plus, the movie has a wierdly underpopulated look to it. For someone who was a star for fifty years, Joan seemed to have nobody around her (maybe it was the ax...). She runs her house with one nanny/secretary, and one maid whom we see for one scene. She has one boyfriend, and an "uncle" before marrying Al Steele- and we know that Joan was "popular". At the end of her life she is shown drinking her vodka on a lone mattress on the floor of her apartment, watching Tina accept an award for her. Except for the famous board room scene (which Faye plays like a hungry puma chained just out of reach of the meat counter) most of her scenes have one or two people in them. The Oscar win is really funny- she wins the Oscar when she is home "sick", then makes a grand speech to the throngs of photographers at the door. Except there are maybe 10 people total. But this is all nit-picking. This movie is great in a train-wreck kind of way. It is so blindingly awful, yet clearly made with the intention of being an IMPORTANT MOVIE, that you can't help but giggle. Dunaway's wild gamble of a performance neatly derailed an Oscar-winning career; nobody could look at her without seeing Faye-as-Joan (Use the words "Mommie Dearest" around her at your peril) I give it 3 stars for the price of the DVD ([...] retail? Are you high?) and as for the lack of extras, I doubt you'd get any from Paramount on a movie that the director sued them to stop the advertising campaign for. I demand a directors cut right now!
Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest bad movies ever made!
Review: This is just a great bad movie, right up there with "Plan Nine From Outer Space". The movie is not a great piece of cinimatic history. But it is a fun movie to watch. The DVD has nothing extra to speak of on it, other than being in widescreen. Faye Dunaway was done up to look very much like Joan Crawford at times looking TOO much like Joan Crawford. The acting is way over the top, as is the "drama". While watching the movie it's good to keep in mind that it is almost totally fiction. True, Joan Crawford was never going to win the mother of the year award. But even Christina Crawford does not like this film, as her mother is presented as a total psycho. The studio did not like her original screenplay based on her novel of the same name, so the studio redid it to suit their liking. The movie paints Christina to be a bitter child of a celebrity. The fact is that through it all Christina loved her mother. And although much of what's depicted in the film did happen, it wasn't to that extent. The wire hanger scene did happen, but not the same night as the bathroom floor scene. All these things took place over the course of several months. Anyway, it's a great trashy film, watch it on Mother's Day and think of mom.
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