 |
| I think from the side, Lilo's lips look even more hideous. |
Oh where to start where to start, I imagine dear reader that you believe someone like myself reviewing something as gloriously cheeseball as Liz and Dick (2012) is like a kid on a field day after smoking the best crack he's ever had and drinking 13 red bulls. Alas, it's all rather depressing. There are so many points I want to make, yet all of them seem redundant. I mean let's talk about the veritable truths that bind together all of mankind. Lindsay Lohan is an awful train-wreck, made-for-tv biopics are the kiss of death, no one compares to Elizabeth Taylor nor should ever try to play her period, and gaudy costumes and breathless delivery do not make a movie. How many times do I have to say this before people actually listen is the real question. Unfortunately the answer is forever...or I develop rheumatoid arthritis in both hands.
 |
| Cut, print, shit. |
So why did I turn on the TV? Well I had just completely an arduous 7 hour drive back from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, unpacked and turned on Lifetime enough to catch LiLo as Lizzy getting Richard Burton (Grant Bowler) drunk in her dressing room because he was way too hungover to perform ANYTHING on one particular day in the Roman heat dressed to the nines as Mark Antony, and her rather dowdy and frumpy, and so not nearly as fabulous as Elizabeth Taylor was back then, extra weight and everything. She calls him the 'Welsh Don Juan' and expresses her fears of being 'just another notch on his belt' like that phrase hasn't been done to death, thank you writers.
Eventually they fuck and all is well in spouse-cheating land. That is until this new phenom enters the picture, these mosquito-like buzzing photographers that squat in bushes and jump out in front of cars. They mention how Fellini coined the term for the little fuckers called 'paparazzi', thanks for that impromptu film studies lesson idiots. Fellini is crying in heaven that you dare mention his name. Moving on.
 |
| Aside from everything else wrong with this picture, did anyone else notice how 'glazed over' LiLo seemed to be the whole time? I mean, I've heard of method acting, but I don't think that's what this is. |
There's a montage of fucking, which is highly gross considering even made up as Liz Taylor LiLo is beyond undesirable. She's definitely an 'if-i-had-to' kinda girl, but even then I could almost see the Hep-C being transmitted as Grant kissed her with the most faux passion he could muster without gagging.
Oh and beyond that, they have to dumb it down by having the two leads sit in directors chairs and talk about each other in the third person basically explaining what just happened in the previous scene to us like we're all completely retarded. The only piece of method acting that LiLo is able to apply to this travesty is how well she smokes her cigarettes. For some reason I hate it when you get a non-smoking actor to play a chainsmoking character. They always go at the cig like they're performing fellatio on it...so I guess good job there, LiLo.
Right as the Ambien was taking effect and I was about to rid myself of this shitshow, a drunken Burton makes the startling announcement that would destroy dear Liz's 4th marraige to Eddie Fisher in front of Eddie Fisher; they are in love, and fucking like a lot, so uh if he wouldn't mind getting the hell out of the way everyone would really appreciate it.
 | |
| Playing dress up is always fun, so is recreating iconic photos, but this is people's lives here, not Halloween k folks? |
Then LiLo runs her pretty head off outside in tears; 'oy the mess i've gotten myself into again' certainly permeating through her head. And then there's another fuck montage. As I have actually read bios on Elizabeth Taylor and just finished 'Furious Love' (2011); the definitive account of Burton-Taylor crazyballs shenanigans, I knew what was going to come next and I was not in the mood. Fucking and fighting seem to go hand in hand in the story of Liz and Dick, but in this film, each is equally as displeasurable as the other. Also, just like Meg Ryan, Lilo's lips had become a fixture. I was tired of looking at them. They seemed to overwhelm the screen and there was little else I could pay attention to. So I drifted off into a dreamless sleep, and woke up the next morning with a bitter taste in my mouth. It was not the bitterness of disappointment I assure you, as I had prepared myself for this for months. It's hard to be disappointed at something you knew was going to be stanky garbage to begin with, but I felt it unfair that people had to be subjected to it, though I knew no one would ever take this seriously. It happened, and now we can all move on.
Trailer below. 'Are you convinced?' ....never was.
No comments:
Post a Comment