Director: Lloyd Kramer
Year: 2012
Country: U.S
Language: English
Elizabeth Taylor is one of the greatest actresses in the history of cinema, alongside such greats as Bettie Davis (All About Eve) and Meryl Streep (Sophie's Choice). Her well known acting abilities have won her two Academy Awards, one for Who's Afraid of Virginia and another for Butterfield 8. She has had an enduring appeal that has stood the test of time. Which is why I was quite intrigued when I heard a film about her was being made.
Liz and Dick is essentially about the relationship between two great Hollywood icons. On one side we have Elizabeth Taylor (Lindsay Lohan) and on the other we have Richard Burton (Grant Bowler). Their love affair gave rise to the dreaded paparazzi and their rocky unstable relationship was often captured on camera, most notably Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
On IMDB they call this this film the "no holds barred" account of Taylor and Burton's relationship, whoever wrote that must have not seen the film yet. Honestly I only watched it to see how bad it would be, and I was not disappointed. It's a tragedy in every sense of the word, and not in a good way. Unrealistically I was actually rooting for Lindsay Lohan to do a great job even if it was a bad film, I though it could be her "comeback"However if she's not mumbling through her lines, she is incredibly inconsistent with her accent. She switches from British to American accents in MID SENTENCE! Sometimes she delivers her lines with a Boston accent. Physically she might resemble Natalie Wood more than Elizabeth Taylor, there seemed to be no real resemblance. Lohan did not emit any of the sexuality Liz had.
While there aren't as many problems with Grant Bowler, his character looks MUCH older than Elizabeth Taylor and thus their relationship almost resembles that of Lolita and Humbert Humbert in Lolita. In other words, it's a bit creepy and off-putting. For a film that takes place over a period of decades the time progression was very strange. Even though the scenes changed often you would have no idea how much time had passed until it was mentioned in the dialogue or in text. Most of the scenes looked the same, the characters didn't looked like they aged at all and the editing in this film was poor.
In conclusion, Liz and Dick is a sleazy film that seems like it was carelessly put together. Even if Lohan's acting was flawless it still would not be able to save this mess of a film. I found it fun to watch, only because I enjoyed how bad it was. Even the dialouge ("I don't loathe you, I hate you!") was absolutely dreadful. Though what do you expect from a film that was only aired by a second rate television station? I didn't even know Lifetime existed until I saw that Liz and Dick would be playing on it. Piss on it! 0.5/5
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