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Liz & Dick: reviews

First reviews of US telemovie Liz & Dick, on the tempestuous relationship of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, have been savage.

First reviews of US telemovie Liz & Dick, a biopic on the tempestuous relationship of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, have been savage.

The Lifetime movie stars Lindsay Lohan as Taylor and our own Grant Bowler as Burton.

Hollywood Reporter says:
Lohan is woeful as Taylor from start to finish. But, whatever you do, don’t miss Liz & Dick. It’s an instant classic of unintentional hilarity. Drinking games were made for movies like this. And the best part is that it gets worse as it goes on, so in the right company with the right beverages, Liz & Dick could be unbearably hilarious toward the tail end of the 90-minute running time. By the time Lohan is playing mid-’80s Taylor and it looks like a lost Saturday Night Live skit, your body may be cramped by convulsions. The movie co-stars Grant Bowler as Richard Burton, and he at least gets to play drunk half the time, deliciously mean a quarter of the time and, well, you’ll be staring at Lohan all the time anyway (though a good deal of the limited amount of tolerable dialogue from writer Christopher Monger — known for Temple Grandin — goes to Bowler.)

NY Daily News:
It’s tempting to say the movie’s big problem is that Lohan is no Liz Taylor. And she isn’t – though that’s not entirely her fault. There aren’t all that many actresses, or women, who can stop a room simply by walking into it. Liz Taylor in her prime could do that. She could make men melt. Lindsay Lohan’s Taylor does not. She also never fully captures the fascinating dichotomy of Liz Taylor – that she was an earthy character who spent much of her life in severe pain from back injuries, yet she also had an almost other-worldly public elegance. Lohan gives us little of that. Grant Bowler comes closer to Burton’s rough, rugged charm and rich voice – a voice born to play Shakespeare, yet too often reduced to disposable junk because the paychecks supported the life to which he and Taylor had become accustomed. What “Liz & Dick” may lack most is a sense of the world in which Taylor and Burton lived. The people around them like Sybil, the wife that Burton dumped when he tumbled for Liz, are represented reasonably well. What we don’t get is a sense of the larger universe that had so much to do with shaping Liz’s and Dick’s world.

But the NY Post says:
Lohan, in character as Taylor, is often so believable you might think you’re seeing the real thing, but then every once in a while she’ll backslide and deliver lines that sound DOA. Not her fault, since Liz’s words in real life were often affected and hammy. ot that she had anything on her egomaniacal ham of a husband when it came to words. Bowler has Burton’s words and voice down pat, but are they kidding with that rug? It looks like he’s wearing a yak on his head. That being said, there are so many things in this movie that are just so damned juicy that it is sure is more fun to watch than the exploits of today’s orchestrated star pairings.

7 Responses

  1. When I first heard about this movie and that Lindsay Lohan was going to play Elizabeth Taylor it was a “What the???” moment – I see that I have been proved right. Ms Lohan is more known these days for stealing, driving her car badly and drinking and drugging rather than her “acting”.
    Surely they could have found someone more credible for the role!

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