Word: crawford
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Losing one's temper at times, even unjustly, doesn't make a parent a monster. I'm not necessarily an admirer of Joan Crawford, but my sympathy lies with her for not being able to strike back at her accuser from the grave...
There is no real plot to this travelogue of the Crawfords' ups and downs during Joan's career. The problem is, we rarely get out of the family's house. We never see Joan filming a movie or interacting with other movie stars. Instead, we sit around the living room watching Christina get yelled at. A history of Joan's career might have been worthwhile; she was an interesting character. Her daughter is not. But since Christina wrote the book, she's what we get. The other Crawford child, Christopher, is something of a non-character in Mommie Dearest...
FAYE DUNAWAY, who plays Joan, cannot be blamed for the failure of this film. She is a fine actress, and the work she invested to perfect her Joan Crawford imitation is evident throughout. Her recreation of Crawford's seductive, almost sneer-like frown is remarkable. And the make-up artists deserve credit, too, for Dunaway looks as well as acts the part. Both Diana Scarwid and Mara Hobel, who play Christina as a child and as an adult, respectively, turn in good performances. There is no problem with the acting in Mommie Dearest. The flaw is the absolute lack...
Director Frank Perry seems content simply to let Joan and Christina rant and rave at each other, and he makes few attempts to explain Joan's complex characters or to dig beneath the disputes for the real reasons for Crawford's mistreatment of her daughter. When the scenes roll around in which Joan is nice to her daughter, we are only further confused. The relationship between Christina and Joan is shown through a series of vignettes which take place over a span of 30 years, but these scenes are only loosely strung together. They argue here, they argue there, time...
...that Christina could not have resisted taking revenge on her mother, and it's too bad to see Joan Crawford posthumously dragged through the mud. Christina's attempt to cash in on her mother's problems shows very little class on her part. It would have been much better all around if this movie were never made...