Erick Massoto is a senior news writer and film critic for Collider. He specializes in thriller movies and TV, satire news shows and anime series.
It's always interesting to see actors playing other actors, but this type of movie gets a whole other layer depending on the aspect that the story chooses to focus on. In 1981, Faye Dunaway accepted the challenge of playing a screen legend from the Golden Age of Hollywood: Joan Crawford. However, Mommie Dearest is pretty far from your typical biopic, as it depicts the highly toxic relationship between the actor and her daughter Christina Crawford.
Directed by Frank Perry , Mommie Dearest is extremely graphic in its depiction of domestic violence, and features several scenes in which Crawford voluntarily causes trauma in her small child. The movie makes it seem that Crawford's diva behavior extended far beyond the movie sets, and that she had a narcissistic relationship with her daughter in which the girl was frequently exposed to threats, verbal abuse and physical violence.
The drama of Mommie Dearest wasn't exclusive to when the cameras were rolling, though. At the time of the release and in the years following, several reports surfaced of Dunaway not being professional during filming, as well as "screaming and yelling at the crew members." The screenplay also underwent several rewrites and suffered last-minute changes in direction and in the lead role — Anne Bancroft was originally attached to play the title role.
The reviews were also not very favorable. Famous critic Roger Ebert gave Mommie Dearestone star out of four and wrote that he couldn't "imagine who would want to subject themselves to this movie." Ebert called it "a painful experience" and pointed out that "the movie makes no attempt to draw psychological insights from the life of its Joan Crawford." The movie holds a 48% approval rate on Rotten Tomatoes.
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