Mommie Dearest

Mommie Dearest

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Movie Reviews of Mommie Dearest

Movie Review: Unfailingly hilarious
Summary: 5 Stars

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.

Summary of Mommie Dearest