Lorelai: (to Rory) You're not gonna give me the Mommie Dearest treatment forever, are ya?
This is another flick I had never seen before taking on my Gilmore girls Movie Challenge. Why? I honestly have no idea. Just never made it onto my radar until now.
Mommie Dearest was released in 1981. It chronicles the abusive relationship between an alcoholic Joan Crawford and her adopted children, Christina and Christopher. The flick was adapted from Christina Crawford's 1978 autobiography of the same name. Distributed by Paramount Pictures, the only one of the "Big 8" studios that never featured Joan Crawford in a film, Mommie Dearest was a huge box-office success, grossing $39 million on a $5 million budget. As is the case with many of our Gilmore girls references, it has become a cult classic.
The flick opens with Joan going through a meticulous morning routine, scrubbing, exfoliating, scrubbing, dressing- and coming out on the other end looking like a cracked-out circus clown. Yikes!
Later, she heads downstairs to terrorize the help by micro-managing the oh-so-vital task of floor scrubbing.
One of Joan's several lovers comes by. She whines about how much she wants a kid while Mr. Boy Toy tries to tell her she'd be a pretty shitty mom because she's too conceited. Unfettered, she heads to the adoption agency, to no avail. This strikes me as hilarious by today's standards, where movie stars have whole troops of adopted kids. Finally Mr. BT pulls some strings and viola, Christina joins the Crawford brood.
Joan loves showing Christina off and making extravagant gestures, but then she does shit like host a huge birthday party with tons of stars who shower Christina with extravagant gifts, only later telling Christina she may keep only one or two gifts and the rest will be given to charity. WTF?!
Later she adopts Christopher as well. Throughout the two children's youth Joan becomes ever more of a drunken fool. The film company she has been with for many years dumps her, sending her into a tailspin of poor-poor me. She lashes out at the kids in a variety of ways, including the infamous "no wire hangers" screaming fit that ends in Christina's closet and bathroom being utterly destroyed, with Christina lying beaten in a heap in the midst of the rubble. When her brother offers to help clean it up, a look of terror comes into Christina's eyes as she emphatically tells him he can't because Mommie Dearest will flip her shit.
In another freak-out session, Joan tries to force Christina to eat the rest of her dinner, which Christina does not want. An epic stand-off ensues, with Joan presenting the child with the same half-eaten plate of food day after day, for every meal. Christina stands her ground, starving herself for days, until Joan finally backs down.
Away at college, Christina is finally able to crawl out form under the large, psycho-clown shadow of her mother...for a minute. Soon she finds herself falling for a boy. Said boy has a girlfriend, but this doesn't stop him from making out with Christina. Dude's girlfriend catches them making out and reports the incident to the headmistress, who promptly notifies Joan. Joan freaks, worried only about how this will look to her public, ultimately shipping Christina off to a nunnery.
Christina begs not to be sent away because she loves school, but Mommie Dearest's mind is already made up. Eventually Christina comes to be friends with the nuns, and finds a kind of peace with them.
Joan eventually bounces to Mr. Pepsi, a bigwig for the company, and begins milking him for every dime he has. Mr. P likes Christina. He sneaks her money after Joan demands that Christina make her own way.
Joan lands a good part on a TV series for a while, but her success is short lived when she becomes ill and her good ol' Mommie steps in to the role in her absence, stealing the part away.
Somewhere along the way Joan has to be pulled off of Christina as she strangles the girl.
Meanwhile, Mr. Pepsi dies, leaving a huge debt in his wake. As a board member now, Joan is confronted by the top brass at PepsiCo. They tell her how her hubby had leveraged his stock against a bunch of loans and she now owes them a shit-ton of dough. Unfettered, she freaks the fuck out in a whirl-wind of cursing, yelling and all-around fit-throwing, until she essentially black mails the company into wiping out her debt as well as restoring her stock options and keeping her on the board. Wowzers.
When Joan finally dies, she leaves nothing to Christina and Christopher, stating in her will that this was "for reasons that should be clear to them." Christopher mutters something about Joan always getting the last word. With an evil twinkle in her eyes, Christina disagrees.
I thoroughly enjoyed this flick. Were things really as bad in the Crawford house as Christina portrays in her book? There have been tons of stars, friends and family on each side of the debate. All we can say for sure is that everyone pretty much agrees that Mommie Dearest was an alcoholic, which rarely equals rainbows and puppies. Mommie Dearest was one of the first celebrity tell-alls, and has enjoyed much success.
I give this film a rating of 1 sack-full of gold Pippi coins. It was a pretty decent flick that would make a great drinking game.
Thanks for tuning in for another edition of Deans Black, White and Read Nights! I hope you enjoyed this little romp through a great movie with me! Check out my previous reviews and be on the lookout for my next review, coming soon.
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