I'm really not sure this is an accurate portrayal of the late screen legend Joan Crawford who died before this film was made. The book caused much controversy and I'm also going to assume rightfully so. The problem with this picture is its based on the accounts of an orphaned child that Ms. Crawford adopted at the height of her fame. There was most likely troubles between the two but it doesn't make everything depicted in this campy movie fact. For one, Joan Crawford wasn't alive to defend herself and for people who never knew her this movie has forever painted a one sided portrait of a woman who meant alot to Hollywood for many years.
For what it's worth, it is an interesting narrative and Faye Dunaway gives an above average performance.
This was a good movie. I felt so sorry for the kids! I can't believe people didn't know about her and try to help those kids. The scene where she freaks out about the wire hangers is the scene that I remember the most. That was very well acted and so conviencing! It's a movie that scared the crap out of me as a child, but I still have to sit down and watch it every time it comes on TV.
I used to catch this movie in the wee hours of the morning on my little black & white T.V. when I was younger. It sucked me in & made me watch every single time!!
Odd as it is. but I really like this movie.Faye Dunaway did an awesome job in it.I'm not sure if she was nominated or won an award for this role, but she should've.Also what a surpriseing look into Joan Crawford's life, who knew a great actress like that, could and would treat her kids so badly.
Joan Crawford: "No... wire... hangers. What's wire hangers doing in this closet when I told you: no wire hangers EVER?"
Film legend Joan Crawford (Dunaway) seems to have it all: a thriving career, a beautiful Brentwood mansion, and a hunky boyfriend. However, Joan is determined to also have a child, so she adopts young Christina (Mara Hobel). However, the obsessive-compulsive actress is not well suited to the task. Joan proceeds to deliver a seminar on how not to raise children: taunting Christina when she loses to her mother in a pool race, starving her because she won't eat raw steak, beating the crap out of her with a wire hanger, all in the name of raising Christina to be a proper young lady. As Joan's career starts to fade, she becomes even more desperate, stealing the now-older Christina's (Diana Scarwid) role on a soap opera. In her final years, Joan descends into a vodka-fueled funk but, despite the years of abuse and histrionics, Christina still loves her "Mommie Dearest." Faye Dunaway practically chews the scenery as Joan Crawford. There is absolutely no restraint to her performance, and sometimes it's difficult not to laugh. Nevertheless, Dunaway's makeup is very convincing, she ages impressively, and she looks uncannily like Crawford. The other performances fade into the background. This is Dunaway's one-woman show. And look out, because she shows it all. For all its sins both in intent and execution "Mommie Dearest" is one of those films you have to see to believe. Though it's excessive style might underplay the seriousness of child abuse and alcoholism, it emerges as one of those films that isn't to be taken too seriously- so don?t.
Most horrifying show I watched as it brought up alot of painful memories for me. Ive got all the books that Christiana Crawford wrote after she wrote this book
faye dunaway was outstanding, to this day i can hear her voice saying "no more wire hangers EVER!" those poor kids... fantastic acting all around, very very well done
ROFLMAO! There are so many great things about this movie, especially the bi-polar one liner outbursts, but the best has to be...NOO MOOORE WIIIRE HANGERRRSS!!!! XD I love when she beats her with the Comet. Hahahahaha!!! CLASSIC.
Call me demented but I found this one marvelously entertaining. It's been described as the first comedy about child abuse. Dunaway's performance was so campy and over-the-top that it earned her some Razzies. I'm gonna start a tradition to watch this every mothers day.
Or what I like to call campy sh*t fest that killed Faye Dunaway's career. Mommie Dearest is as bad as everyone says it is but at even so bad that it becomes fun to watch. Quite simply this movie sucks.
This is an oldie but goodie. This is a must see movie. One of my favorite lines are "no more wire hangers" or "Christina , why can't you give me the respect that I deserve"
Faye Dunaway stars as the very nasty and self centered child beater Joan Crawford. Very disturbing picture at times. Also stars Diana Scarwig, who plays the sheriff of Othertown on LOST.
OMG! No wonder they people would not let her adopt a child, she was to God - awful mean! I cannot believe her husnand bent the rules like that just to get her children and she beat them and treated them like crap! This was a great movie that not all people no matter haow rich they are don't need kids.
mommie dearest is one of the classic camps which is so legendarily awful that it could be called "phenomenonal"...lol.
the notorious tales of joan crawford's evil maternality has been widely known already thanks to faye dunaway's overacting in "mommie dearest" that could be considered one of the most successfully excercised disparage ever in cinematic history. it's so malaciously achieved that i must announce that christina crawford herself is evil, draining the essence of the dead from the graveyard of her "adopted mother".
crawford had a reputation of being brittle and hard-boiled to the bone, but she was also a glamour queen before the 50s, just reminiscent the fashion icons she had built with her stylish idiocyncracy, and her husky tone of voice which provokes defying sensuality thru her bold brazen attitudes. obviously none of those advantages is transpired in faye dunaway's caricature of crawford. dunaway's campy performance obliterates every remnant of crawford's beauty in audience's memories. each move she had made in it looks grotesquely clumsy, and her contorted face appear lunaticly horrorsome with each line of her wrinkles over carven in her complexion.
of course, i must complain to the cosmetic apartment about dunaway's crawfordian eyebrows which seems really dramaticly exaggerated just to mock the dated fashion then, but even joan crawford herself didn't look so "twisted"...dunaway attempted to lower her vocal into the low-pitch smoldering smoker sound which was popular sign of glamour for movie stars then, dunaway did nothing but growl like a crude beast. if you view those old crawford flicks, she did have her unique way to deliver those lines with punctured shrewdness.
"mommie dearest" certainly does a good job at defaming joan crawford, further more, it's sinister uglification to a tough surviving woman who exerts herself literarily to her tombstone. but i gotta admit the axe-swaying scene which is blandly stolen from crawford's 50s camp "strait-jacket" is absolutely hilarious. maybe gutsy females are easy targets to attack, even after her demise, you could still snatch her corpse out to whip it, for your private indulgement as well as your angst toward contemporary cultural effemination.
Possibly the most interesting horror film that was intended to be a plain old biopic. Joan Crawford was horrifying (if this is to be true). So many cheesy lines that will forever be engrained into your thick heads. PICK UP THIS MESS!
This is a film about Joan Crawford's relationship with her adopted children. Played by Faye Dunaway in the central role--she looks the 'perfect' star to represent Crawford--square shoulder, the arched eyebrows, the v-shaped mouth, and when Dunaway stares, her eyes are like basilisks.
In Mommie Dearest--the emotions are so splendid, the scenes so dramatic and the experiences so brilliant.
This is a serious film, in no way designed to be deliberately funny and yet with Dunaway's portrayal of a haunted and bitter woman, the film is a comic masterpiece by accident.
Joan Crawford was clearly terrified of failure, and it was this fear that drove her to the kind of bizarre perfectionism and competitiveness which marked her life.
How do you rate a movie like this? On the one hand, it's one of the worst movies I've ever seen: completely lacking in coherence, shameful acting, writing so bad it seems to be making fun of itself.On the other hand, it's such a rip-roarin' good time of a show that I'm tempted to give it 5 stars on the strength of its sheer entertainment value alone. All I can say is, if you watch this movie with the right people in the right frame of mind (i.e. with alcohol), you will be howling.
MCT:July 22, 2008
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