Thursday, May 18, 2017

Mommie Dearest (1981)

Director: Frank Perry. Cast: Faye Dunaway, Diana Scarwid, Steve Forrest, Xander Berkeley. 129 min. Rated R. Biography/Drama.

In preparation for Feud, after watching the splendid classics Mildred Pierce (1945) and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), I succumbed to this. It contains my main movie pet-peeve: the director who wants to hurt you. We're subjected to long, agonizing sequences depicting Joan Crawford hurling cruelty after cruelty onto her adopted daughter, sprinkled with more scenes of moaning and groaning which have no role in the story, because there's no payback to them. Prolonging Crawford's own funeral scene at the end (including a young Xander Berkeley as Crawford's son) suddenly pushed me to giggling, so you get the idea.

Trivia: I learned two long hours too late, that the movie had received Golden Razzies for "Worst Picture of the Decade", and "Worst Drama of Our First 25 Years".

Mo says:

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