My dear online friend, legendaryCrawford of Boston Mass, invited me to see this movie, and valuing my internet pal's opinion on films like this, I couldn't refuse.<br /><br />But "Rain" was laughable, hardly intense, gripping or thought-provoking. I watched it only to see Mommie Dearest to get some understanding of possibly the second-most self-destructive Hollywood actress, Monroe being the first. <br /><br />From the moment Crawford spoke and moved in her earthy, brazen manner, I thought of Penny Marshall doing LaVerne DeFazio on the seventies sitcom. <br /><br />Even during the 'conversion' it looked just like the way DeFazio used to behave when she felt defeated. Some of it bordered on precious (I'm eating' my suppah. I guess my suppah can wait.), but most of it was tiresome and clichéd and contrived. <br /><br />Why would the pious minister's wife be so offended by Crawford and not by the staggering drunk? Obviously the story was just to make Crawford the victim of the discrimination due to her lifestyle. <br /><br />Her getup and behaviour of a fallen woman was amusing also when you think of all the dear ladies who have appeared in MTV videos and all that "breakthrough" business Madonna pulled back in the eighties and nineties. Goes around, comes around. <br /><br />Watch this movie only for Crawford. Again in the conversion, I couldn't help but think of Reverend Lovejoy on the Simpsons when Walter Huston began praying.<br /><br />Huston and his on screen wife were very unpleasant stereotypes of ticky, self-righteous bible-thumpers ("Don't even look at her" -- but the drunk could stagger all around their table) And I didn't understand Huston's fate at all. <br /><br />Crawford walks off hand-in-hand with Prince Charming, something she would do in many films later on. But her trashy attire is insightful (again, think of MTV. I'm gonna let my teen-aged nephew see this).