Watched the more-than-two-hours-long, full, 1981 movie Mommie Dearest on Facebook videos. Based on Christina Crawford's book of the same title, it is the same movie that made Faye Dunaway the laughing stock of Hollywood for years. To me, it is a failure not for the reasons critics gave, but for the fact that it comes across as an act of vengeance by a daughter who received no inheritance, generating much negative energy and leaving a very bad aftertaste. In addition, none of the characters seem worth sympathizing with; they are either too mean or too inadequate. 

Production-wise, the movie seems to have been an assemblage of sensational scenes independently conceived, strung together, and then padded with awkward, if not abrupt, transition scenes, resulting in a montage of disjointed sequences. You couldn't tell how it would all end, and, in the end, the lesson was a simple one that everyone already knows: Be kind to your children.

Faye Dunaway's character acting verges on the caricature, and her grotesque make-up doesn't help any. In all fairness to her, however, there were several moments when I felt that I was watching Joan Crawford on the screen. Having said that, I am certain that, in retrospect, Hollywood disapproved of Faye Dunaway not because of how she played the role but because she consented to play it. Both the book and the movie were not merely irreverent to Joan Crawford--they were unnecessarily disrespectful. 

I'm sure even Bette Davis hated it.