Review of Mommie Dearest (1981) by Wellington O — 23 Dec 2012

It doesn't really deserve 6/10, as the movie doesn't make narrative sense. Success follows crisis without any pattern. At one moment, Joan is in triumph after winning the Oscar for "Mildred Pierce." In the very next scene she goes so berserk we want to scrape her off the screen with a spatula. The scenes don't build, they just happen. Another example: After an especially ugly fight, Joan sends Christina to a convent school. There's a scene where the mother superior welcomes her and promises to reform her. One scene later, Christina checks out of the school, and the nun wishes her godspeed. No mention of what happened in the school, how it affected Christina, or whether the nun changed her opinion of the girl.

The movie makes no attempt to draw psychological insights from the life of its Joan Crawford, not even through the shorthand Freudianism much beloved by Hollywood. Mommie is a monster, that's all, and there's some mention of her unhappy childhood. Christina is a brave, smiling, pretty, long-suffering dope who might inspire more sympathy if she were not directed (in both her childhood and adult versions) to be distant and veiled.

As stated before, it doesn't deserve 6/10, but one cannot deny its entertaining camp value. And Faye Dunaway makes a very formidable villain. NO WIRE HANGERS, EVER!!!!