I'm not even one of JOAN CRAWFORD's biggest fans, but I think what they've done with the novel MOMMIE DEAREST is totally stupid and unworthy of any sort of detailed film comment. Not that I had any hopes that the screen version would be on a quality level with Masterpiece Theatre. Hardly that. But it certainly trashes the movie star with incidents that seem exaggerated to hold the attention.<br /><br />FAYE DUNAWAY's Joan Crawford is the sort of caricature that would be more appropriate on the Carol Burnett Show, where famous screen heroines were often ribbed in their award-winning roles. She indulges in a series of poses guaranteed to draw derisive laughter. There are limits to anyone's patience and even for the sake of a few laughs (or chuckles, to be more exact), this is such a poor imitation of the book that it's no wonder Dunaway had any professional reputation after making it. Not that the novel had any real literary merit, but at least it did provide some insight into Crawford's psyche and the reader was free to decide when creative license was taken.<br /><br />It's all one big clichéd treatment, as glossy and artificial as any Joan Crawford film ever was. Any resemblance between the creature pictured here and reality is purely coincidental...at least that's what the foreword to this film should have warned the audience for the sake of warning the gullible not to believe everything depicted here.<br /><br />This is schlock of the worst kind, an insult to plain intelligence and too scmaltzy to convince me that it rings of the truth. There is no balance to the treatment. All of it is painted in broad strokes that verge on caricature, more and more so as the film goes on.<br /><br />Summing up: Worth skipping. Trivial and artificial.