The Worst Film Ever

That was an excellent one.

Sorry, this movie sucks

Highly Overrated But Still Good

It's not pretty. Overacting? Only someone who has never seen this in real life, because they haven't lived with someone like this, would say it's over acted. It's serious and horrible. I feel people have treated this film like it's a fictional story. This is the terrifying account from someone who lived through it - not a made up horror script. Time people woke up. Great Movie.

Maybe because it wasn't about real life despised icons like Richard Nixon, or Senator Joe McCarthy, that a bio got trashed by critics before audiences turned MOMMIE DEAREST into a quotable punchline of bizarre biopic cinema. And yet, anyone who grew up watching this addictive, child-beating, temperamental show biz nightmare really did enjoy the damn thing...Dare it be said and agreeing with indie director John Waters on the DVD commentary: This maligned motion picture is solid entertainment as Director Frank Norris takes us back to the 1930's up into the 1970's with a colorful yet grainy, lived-in aesthetic as if we're there to suffer along with an incredibly talented child starlet, Mara Hobel as Young Christina Crawford who, grown up, wrote the bestselling tell-all novel that not only became a famous (if infamous) movie, but was her own final word to a rich mother who left her completely out of the will... Ouch!At one point, Hobel literally stands (stomps) her ground against Faye Dunaway, in a performance where the subtle stuff works better than unintentionally hilarious scenes like "No More Wire Hangers" and especially, "Christina, bring me the axe!"Which is right out of her William Castle drive-in exploitation STRAIT-JACKET as opposed to mentioning it as one of many films in her decade-spanning resume. Other than icing her face while leafing through the script for, ironically, ICE FOLLIES OF 1939, and rehearsing with long suffering maid Rutanya Alda for Joan's Oscar winning performance in MILDRED PIERCE, the timeline covered is completely off-screen, mostly taking place in her well-kept, anally dust-free mansion and, as her daughter ages into method actress Diana Scarwid, the intensity narrows into moments that really goads the viewer into loving-to-hate this woman who's blamed for both physical and mental abuse. When Scarwid's Christina smiles sweetly while ordering to a classy restaurant's gentleman waiter, Dunaway's snide, penetrating remark (pp),"It's not good to flirt, Christina," is far more effective than the noisy stuff...Scarwid... critic proof compared to Dunaway, who probably felt her career was stunted ala Tony Perkins in PSYCHO... injects eye-dagger expressions progressed from her younger self. After Christina is thrown out of a fancy private school, MOMMIE asks where she can fill up her flask and, after daughter answers too quickly, Dunaway provides her best line: "You know where to find the boys AND the booze!"Basically it's all a pulpy soap, including a third act marriage to the very sweet man who humbly ran Pepsi Cola, a nice change from mellow yet miffed, square-jawed, ascot-donning Steve Forrest, whose big brother, Dana Andrews, played opposite Joan in Otto Preminger's DAISY KENYON...What Joan does to "help" her daughter, after having finally gotten a role on a soap, is almost worse than the axe, the hanger, and a climactic, unbelievable beating and strangulation as Christina's legs are flipping and flopping on the expensive carpet while a reporter (Jocelyn Brando) is in the next room... Imagine getting away with that nowadays!According to John Waters, the studio had "plants" disperse hangers for the audience in order to chalk the entire venture as an "intentional comedy all along"...What's left out of the film's legacy is an immense fan-base that caught all the television and cable outlet screenings - even before the video boom of the mid 1980's in which, at that point, the cult status was already established: a sort of cult within a cult: Perhaps a combination of those who consider DEAREST a howler to others - the silent majority - who are mesmerized by Faye Dunaway's twisted yet natural, eerily and menacing performance as a psychopathic Hollywood A-list Oscar winner turned B-movie has-been... Say what you (they) will, no one else could have carried what critics and Crawford fans think is "pure fiction," but they didn't live with Joan like the true MOMMIE fans live again and again with Dunaway - with each and every viewing!

'Mommie Dearest' has to be one of the most difficult to rate and controversial films there is. It has its admirers but also its detractors. To me, it has a good deal to admire but just as much to criticise, but can also say safely that there are far worse films out there and that it didn't deserve to sweep the Razzie Awards (the script and directing wins are understandable, but actress and supporting actress were to me undeserved) or be on worst-film lists.Despite her Razzie win, count me as one of those who thought that Faye Dunaway was incredible. She clearly did her homework, and sounds, looks and walks like Joan Crawford, and it is a performance that's frightening and compelling. One can understand the criticisms of excessive scenery chewing, admittedly it is not a subtle performance by any stretch of the imagination but the acting style fit with how Crawford was written (one-dimensional in the first place and there was always going to be the trap of over-acting).In support, a brilliant Mara Hobel is the standout as child Christina, she throws herself into the role and one does feel sorry for her. The costumes and sets are evocative and beautifully designed, the film as far as biopics go is pretty accurate and the music score is suitably unsettling and bubbly, typical Henry Mancini.However, Diana Scarvid is wooden and looks like her heart wasn't in it and the rest of the cast are rather too restrained. Even for melodrama the dialogue is far too overwrought and the campiness gets truly bizarre and not in a good way. The story may be pretty accurate to the facts and source material, but a lot of it feels very glossed over rather than meaty and the campiness and bizarreness gets too much. A lot of it lacks clarity to the point of incoherence.Editing is also incomprehensible, while the cinematography is relatively flat and the direction is both skippy and rambling.In summary, very difficult to rate, not a particularly good film but nowhere near as bad as its reputation. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Mommie Dearest is a film based on the book of the same title written by Joan Crawford's daughter, Christina Crawford. This film and the book it is based off of tells the story of how Joan Crawford behaved behind closed doors with her children, how she abused them, had crazy/wild outbursts, which sometimes turned violent. In my honest opinion, mommie dearest is very well acted, Faye Dunaway blew me away in her brutally honest portrayal of Hollywood legend Joan Crawford. In the beginning, we are introduced to ms Crawford as a young actress, at the height of her career, working at Metro Goldwyn Mayer, no children, and two divorces. She applies to an adoption agency, but her application is denied, so she goes through some loopholes, pulls some strings, and adopts her daughter, Christina, and then her son Christopher. Throughout the film Joan is depicted by Dunaway as a self obsessed, selfish, child abusing alcoholic that never really gives her love to her children. In many scenes, a teenage Chrisrina tries desperately to gain her mothers love, but she never really receives it. The chemistry between Joan and Christina is good here and the acting is very dramatic and very intense, as it should be. I don't exactly understand some of the negative reviews this movie has received both when it first came out and over the years. I think mommie dearest is a well made and well acted film telling the very sad true story of actress Joan Crawford and her private life and strained relationships with her children with with whom she woefully mistreated. 8/10 for mommie dearest.