Mommie Dearest (1981)
Average Rating: 5.6/10
Reviews Counted: 31
Fresh: 17 | Rotten: 14
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 4.4/10
Critic Reviews: 6
Fresh: 2 | Rotten: 4
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 18,381
My Rating
Movie Info
When her adoptive mother Joan Crawford died in 1977, erstwhile actress/author Christina Crawford and her brother Christopher were left out of Joan Crawford's will, "for reasons which are well known to them." Industryites have suggested that it may have been this posthumous act of rejection rather than an alleged lifetime of parental abuse that inspired Christina Crawford to pen her scathing autobiography Mommie Dearest. The 1981 film version of this tome was evidently meant to be taken
Sep 18, 1981 Wide
Jul 17, 2001
Paramount Pictures
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Cast
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Faye Dunaway
Joan Crawford -
Diana Scarwid
Christina Crawford -
Steve Forrest
Greg Savitt -
Howard Da Silva
Louis B. Mayer -
Mara Hobel
Christina Crawford as c... -
Rutanya Alda
Carol Ann -
Harry Goaz
Al Steele -
Michael Edwards
Ted Gelber -
Jocelyn Brando
Barbara Bennett -
Priscilla Pointer
Mrs. Chadwick -
Gary Allen
Jimmy the Photographer -
Selma Archerd
Connie -
Xander Berkeley
Christopher Crawford ad... -
Carolyn Coates
Mother Superior -
Jerry Douglas
Interviewer -
Margaret Fairchild
Mother Superior at Orph... -
Matthew Faison
Pepsi Executive -
Cathy Lind Hayes
Nurse -
Peter Jason
Pepsi Executive #4 -
Virginia Kiser
Beth Simpson -
S. John Launer
Pepsi Chairman -
Russ Marin
Funeral Director -
Dick McGarvin
Tour Bus Driver -
Nicholas Mele
Assistant Director -
Belita Moreno
Belinda Rosenberg -
Alice Nunn
Helga -
Norman Palmer
Male Guest -
Michael Talbott
Driver -
David F. Price
Tony -
Joseph Warren
Mr. Dodd -
Phillip Richard Allen
Pepsi Executive #1 -
Adrian Aron
Wedding Guest -
Ian Bruce
Assistant Director -
Michael D. Gainsborough
Pepsi Executive #2 -
Warren Munson
Lawyer -
David Sanderson
Fans -
Arthur Taxier
Decorator -
Dawn Jeffory
Vera -
James Kirkwood Jr.
Master of Ceremonies -
Robert Harper
David -
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All Critics (31) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (21) | Rotten (16) | DVD (17)
It's rich, stimulating thought in spite of itself.
Director Frank Perry, who collaborated with three others (including producer Frank Yablans) on the script, gives it all a certain crazed conviction.
Dunaway does not chew scenery. Dunaway starts neatly at each corner of the set in every scene and swallows it whole, costars and all.
Really no dafter, perhaps, than some of Joanie's own Warner Bros melodramas; the trouble is, it thinks it's Art.
Top CriticI can't imagine who would want to subject themselves to this movie.
There is nothing to string the episodes together into a coherent drama, and no insight into Miss Crawford herself.
Trashy soap opera drama on the private life of screen queen Joan Crawford.
Director Frank Perry simply sits back and lets Dunaway rip. He was either supremely untalented or he purposefully intended to sabotage her.
Wire Hangers!
Dunaway creates the benchmark for harridans the world over but never entirely loses sympathy for her subject. It's a constant blast of high melodrama and camp.
'No wire hangers -- ever!' That this apparently banal phrase has now achieved something like immortality is a reflection of the unbridled extravagance of Faye Dunaway's performance.
...relies almost entirely on Dunaway's histrionics to propel the story forward - resulting in a movie that's good for a few unintentional laughs but little else.
A peculiar hybrid: a high-camp Hollywood bio flick about child abuse, elevated substantially above its sordid material by Faye Dunaway's obsessively committed interpretation of legndary star Joan Crawford.
Cult underground director John Waters (Pink Flamingos) is the perfect commentator on this high-camp biopic of legendary star Joan Crawford and on Faye Dunaway's ferociously brilliant performance.
You've gotta give Paramount credit for resisting the urge to call it the "No Wire Hangers Ever! Edition." They're aces. True class.
Perry and Yablans fuse this formal schizophrenia with the cruelly episodic structure and fetishized period details of Hollywood biopics.
Deliciously entertaining trash.
High camp about child abuse... oy Faye!
Audience Reviews for Mommie Dearest
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Joan Crawford: No wire hangers, ever!
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- Christina Crawford: There's a liquor store to the right.
- Joan Crawford: I should have known you'd know where to find the boys and the booze.
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- Joan Crawford: NO WIRE-HANGERS! EVER!
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- Christina Crawford: Fiqures you would know where to find the men AND the booze!
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- Christina Crawford as child: Jesus Christ!
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- Joan Crawford: Christina, bring me the ax!
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