I'm still going to check this out, but I never had any illusions that this would even be anywhere in the same ballpark as the original Trilogy.

Where's our Mommie Dearest review! Don't hold out on us!!!!!

Okay, "Mommie Dearest:"

Holy cow.  Holy freaking cow.  This was nuts.  Just over the top crazy.  It's actually listed on Netflix as "campy," which I'm sure the poor woman who actually LIVED through the experience really appreciates that and the fact that one part of it ("wire hangers") became a joke.  Or maybe it's a Mel Brooks thing where she gets power over it by belittling it.

And I should say while I am thinking about her, I didn't like her character.  At ALL.  And while they avoided the trap of her being too big of a woobie or just "pity me, my life is terrible," I wasn't exactly rooting for her, she was just the butt monkey.  Seeing her get yelled at is why we payed our ticket prices, right?  There was no build-up to her, or any sense of an "I will overcome this" or anything-- she's never really ABLE to shake off Joan's hold on her, nor does she win out at the end.  That SUCKS.  I know it's based on a real story and they did avoid falling into that trap but there wasn't any satisfying conclusion to the story.

Half of the dialogue in the movie wasn't even dialogue but insane, indecipherable cries.  From BOTH main actresses.  I feel like the daughter should have gone arch as well, that set should have had big gaping holes at the end from both women's insane overacting.  Or maybe more of a mental chess game like "Apt Pupil."

There was a call-ahead early on about Joan being unable to have children and I'm AMAZED that they didn't slip in the line "maybe God doesn't WANT you to have children."  There's also the scene after the swimming race where Joan beats her kid (before beating beating her) telling her that she'll always win because she's bigger and I SO wanted her to throw in "I'm big and you're small and I'm right and you're wrong and there's nothing you can do about it!"

And when the daughter (I can't remember her name! Which is NOT a good sign) is forced to clean the bathroom in the dead of night (which stuck in my mind because I had written a similar scene), I was first expecting Joan to make her eat off it, as the cliche goes, but when she's scrubbing, her younger brother Christopher (who disappears after that for about the ENTIRE length of the movie) steps in and she says "she'll kill you if she sees you."  Why doesn't she DO something about it?  And how come we don't see anything about the abuse HE suffered or enabled or anything?

We really should have seen more of the enabling that Joan gets, there was that scene where the interviewer walks in on an abuse scene... did she give them a pass in the press or call them out on it?  We had all those reporters and photographers fawning over her, you could have explored that a little more, after all, the daughter wasn't just in an abusive household, she was in an Old Hollywood Abuse House which is a whole different and fascinating animal.

And I'm amazed that the daughter didn't know about Joan getting drunk until she was an adult... I'd have thought it would be the first thing she'd know about.

Okay, "Mommie Dearest:"

Admit it, this is your new favorite movie now!

It never surprises me what interests people. Ya, the tried, true and safe are gobbled up, but I think a lot of folks like me, look for the unusual