Liz & Dick: A Review
I just wrote an entire post on Liz & Dick that got deleted by fucking Tumblr, which doesn’t autosave, and is maybe the worst platform ever. Now I’m fucked for time. This review will be brief, and Tumblr should get their shit together.
To begin again, last night, I watched Liz & Dick, the Elizabeth Taylor biopic on Lifetime, which stars Lindsay Lohan.
If you are a media whore like me, you know that it got terrible reviews. But I must ask the people harping about it: “What the fuck did you expect, it’s a fucking Lifetime movie.” I’m not a connoisseur of the medium—the only other Lifetime movie I’ve watched in recent memory was “Will & Kate,” which might as well have been enacted by cardboard cutouts—but I certainly did not expect it to be even remotely decent.
If the film was going to be a masterpiece, it would have been on HBO in 2005; and if Lindsay Lohan is going to have a comeback, it was certainly not going to be in a Lifetime movie.
I got the same pleasure from the film that I would watching a music video starring Lana Del Rey or Beyonce. In essence, a lot of pleasure. There were lots of costume changes, lots of fake eyelashes, lots of glasses being thrown, and lots of trappings of wealth and glamour.
The screenplay was junk; the actor playing Richard Burton was even smellier garbage. I can’t imagine that the storyline was true to life (I’d like to investigate more, if I had the time), but Lindsay’s outfits seemed to match old photographs taken of Liz pretty accurately. That’s basically all I wanted from the movie.
Lindsay Lohan is not as terrible as everyone says. I was surprised by how mobile her face was, given all of the plastic surgery. Her accent was not even remotely British; but neither was Elizabeth Taylor’s, even though she was born in England.
Both actresses shared ample bosoms; both shared a complicated relationship with the paparazzi. Both were frequently vilified in the media. Both had major substance abuse problems. Lindsay Lohan, with a better platform, might have done a fantastic job portraying Elizabeth Taylor.
As it was, the movie was mostly lots of eyeshadow, lots of fur coats, and lots and lots of jewelry.
Lindsay Lohan, decidedly, isn’t as beautiful as Elizabeth Taylor was, but still, she’s very pretty.
The producers steered clear of portraying Liz in her later years, when she had wackadoo helmet hair and wore a lot of caftans.
Instead, they limited that look to the final scene of the movie.
Most of the time, they kept it glamour supreme.
If you’re a girl like me, and you like a guilty pleasure, then you will love this movie.
But make sure you have a girlfriend to watch it with. I did so with my friend Meghan, who is a fellow television junkie and lover of gossip, and she enhanced the experience infinitely.
We curled up on her couch with a bottle of wine, and giggled the whole time about how much fun we were having, even though according to more serious reviewers, we weren’t supposed to admit it.