Perhaps most shocking of all is this film’s basis on the book by the real-life Christina Crawford, who chronicles the various instances of maltreatment and cruelty.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 29, 2024

Faye Dunaway gives a startling, ferocious performance in Mommie Dearest. It’s deeper than an impersonation; she turns herself into Joan Crawford, all right, but she’s more Faye Dunaway than ever.

| Sep 18, 2023

There is nothing to sympathize with but the sets, which get far too many drinks spilled on them.

| Dec 7, 2022

I think Dunaway’s actually pretty great in this, going for broke with a baroquely stylized turn a galaxy away from the low-key naturalism so fashionable in boring biopics intending to bring icons down to earth.

| May 7, 2022

[Faye Dunaway's] balls to the wall performance...gave color, flair and a heck of a lot of juice to what's normally a safe to the point of boring film genre.

| Sep 20, 2021

... Mommie Dearest is not a film I'm likely ever to revisit; however, I can recognize and acknowledge how it resonates with so many who can dissociate the reality from the characters.

| Sep 14, 2021

Over the years, Mommie Dearest has created a cult like following the likes of which would make Joan Crawford proud.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 16, 2021

The problem with Dunaway's over-the-top performance is that it becomes increasingly tiresome, less the fault of the actress than of the director (the usually dependable Frank Perry) and team of scripters.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 7, 2021

The movie is confusing and boring... Faye Dunaway does a decent job, but is incapable of overcoming the weakness of the book and the script. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Aug 26, 2019

Mommie Dearest becomes a kind of homage to the monster herself -- the emotions are so splendid, the scenes so dramatic, the experiences so incandescent.

| Jun 3, 2019

Lacking psychological intelligence or, for that matter, awareness of Hollywood sociology, Mommie Dearest is just a collection of screechy scenes further distanced by convictionless direction.

| Dec 11, 2018

This is lavish and pretty accurate as far as Hollywood lore is concerned, but Dunaway makes Norma Desmond look like Doris Day.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 11, 2018

Mara Hobel and Diana Scarwid are wonderful playing Christina the child and the adult... but it's Dunaway, greedily attacking her role, who proves most riveting. In this glossy, gaudy Hollywood kind of movie, she makes her very own kind of truth.

| Dec 11, 2018

With its hysterical sessions of psychological (and occasionally physical) torment, the movie is so wretchedly written and flatly constructed that it's easy to regard as a misguided horror flick.

| Dec 11, 2018

The flaws aren't the story with this unusual film. The story is in the powerful, vivid and emotionally draining scenes of torment and conflict between a mother and daughter.

| Apr 27, 2018

Mommie Dearest is a work created out of pain, but by the time it gets to the screen the audience is laughing at its heroine's pathetic -- and potentially violent -- outbursts.

| Oct 4, 2017

"Mommie Dearest," the film version of Christina Crawford's poison-pen memoir of her adoptive mother, Joan Crawford, looms as wretched excess.

| Oct 4, 2017

The character is rendered such a grotesque, its moments don't accumulate to an arc or even a readable profile. They just pile up, like cars in a traffic accident, and all we can do is gawk.

| Oct 15, 2016

Campy skewering of Hollywood star is both silly and sad.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 13, 2015

Trashy soap opera drama on the private life of screen queen Joan Crawford.

| Original Score: B- | Feb 20, 2013