Mommie Dearest

Faye Dunaway gives a startling, ferocious performance in Mommie Dearest. It’s deeper than an impersonation; she turns herself into Joan Crawford, all right, but she’s more Faye Dunaway than ever.

There is nothing to sympathize with but the sets, which get far too many drinks spilled on them.

Lacking psychological intelligence or, for that matter, awareness of Hollywood sociology, Mommie Dearest is just a collection of screechy scenes further distanced by convictionless direction.

The flaws aren't the story with this unusual film. The story is in the powerful, vivid and emotionally draining scenes of torment and conflict between a mother and daughter.

"Mommie Dearest," the film version of Christina Crawford's poison-pen memoir of her adoptive mother, Joan Crawford, looms as wretched excess.

The character is rendered such a grotesque, its moments don't accumulate to an arc or even a readable profile. They just pile up, like cars in a traffic accident, and all we can do is gawk.

Perhaps most shocking of all is this film’s basis on the book by the real-life Christina Crawford, who chronicles the various instances of maltreatment and cruelty.

I think Dunaway’s actually pretty great in this, going for broke with a baroquely stylized turn a galaxy away from the low-key naturalism so fashionable in boring biopics intending to bring icons down to earth.

[Faye Dunaway's] balls to the wall performance...gave color, flair and a heck of a lot of juice to what's normally a safe to the point of boring film genre.

... Mommie Dearest is not a film I'm likely ever to revisit; however, I can recognize and acknowledge how it resonates with so many who can dissociate the reality from the characters.