Liz & Dick

As we begin, the aged Shakespearean actor Grant Bowler (as Richard "Dick" Burton) appears to be near his death bed, writing a letter to Hollywood temptress Lindsay Lohan (as Elizabeth "Liz" Taylor). We flashback to their 1961 meeting, while beginning the epic "Cleopatra" (1963). He is smitten. She plays hard-to-get, but succumbs quickly. Both are married, which causes great scandal. "Liz & Dick" get married and divorced, twice. They drink a considerable amount of liquor and burn countless cigarettes, which are the common denominators as the jaded couple travel around the world...

This was promoted as a blockbuster film event, but turns out to be a substandard TV-movie. The reason for the hype was Ms. Lohan's (then) status as a celebrity. Her public escapades would seem to suggest she might bring some depth to the role, but it does not happen. Her "Elizabeth" is not as entertaining as the original, by a long shot...

The make-up successfully suggests Ms. Taylor, though it also changes Lohan into both Natalie Wood and Suzanne Pleshette, as the years roll along. The script most obviously lacks Ms. Taylor's sense of humor - and her fondness for frequent obscenities. Her co-star is likewise restrained. One of the better sequences, directed by Lloyd Kramer, occurs when the couple play "rock the trailer" while spouses Eddie Fisher and Sybil Burton arrive on the set. Confusingly pieced together, "Liz & Dick" ends quickly and without any sense of the famous couple's friendship. There simply isn't much story here.

*** Liz & Dick (11/25/12) Lloyd Kramer ~ Lindsay Lohan, Grant Bowler, David Hunt, Theresa Russell

This movie dispels all the mystery and magic around this star-spun couple, here portrayed as rich drunks in a whirlwind of self-absorbed emotion. However, the diction of Grant Bowler is remarkably Burtonesque while Lindsay Lohan cannot rise above the California valley. Taylor spoke with distinction--slowly, somewhat deliberately, and with a stylishly youthful twist in her young to middle years. Lohan mumbles and sprints through her lines with her now nasal-bound voice. I mostly blame the director for missing this most important feature of the legendary Taylor. This movie is a hot mess that grows worse with every scene. It is surely destined for Saturday Night Live.

As has been noted, Bowler evokes Burton with his voice. He has studied him, has it down. Lohan does not sound like Taylor at all, does not bring anything that remotely captures the essence of the woman to this film pairing. She just careens through her lines as if a superficial physical resemblance was all that mattered. And her inability to evoke Elizabeth is a constant irritant. There is nothing in this performance that gives a clue as to why they were attracted to one another...or if they really were. I kept listening for a resemblance in the voice, in the bearing..it just was not there. I found myself thinking at one point that Michael Jackson could have done a better job, as he sure had studied the woman. Painful.

Liz & Dick (2012)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Made-for-TV film about the up and down relationship between Elizabeth Taylor (Lindsay Lohan) and Richard Burton (Grant Bowler). That's pretty much all you need to know in regards to the story. If you don't know who Taylor and Burton were and just tune into this film then you're going to come away that they were both spoiled, drunk idiots who fought and had sex a lot. LIZ & DICK is a pretty poor movie that has some very good stuff in it but there's just no getting around some incredibly big and fatal flaws. The biggest flaw is the casting of Lohan, a talented actress, who is simply in way over her head. I really don't blame her horrible performance on her, I really blame the producers for casting her just to get some press and ratings. It's clear their trick worked but it really ended up killing the film because there's not a single frame where one will believe her as Taylor. The performance from Lohan is just bad and all over the place. Even embarrassing when it comes times for Lohan to re-enact some of the famous scenes from Taylor's movies. You can even call the performance lazy as the film covers twenty-plus years yet Lohan never ages. The film also goes over Taylor battles with gaining weight yet Lohan remains 100-pounds if that. Even worse is Lohan keeping her exact voice and not even trying to do Taylor's. Bowler, on the other hand, does a pretty good job capturing the voice of Burton and he handles the dramatic scenes much better. The film never tells you much about either person other than they drank too much and we never even get any knowledge of the films they made together. This is basically just a sleazy tabloid piece that goes for ratings and very little else. The film remains watchable because of the train wreck of a performance by Lohan but thankfully neither Taylor or Burton lived to see this.

We watch a lot of Lifetime movies. My family swears by them. However, even by Lifetime movie standards, this movie is an absolute put-on production. I expected some level of awkwardness and wince inducing dialogue, but usually there was redeem-ability in the storyline or "charm factor". This movie had all the potential to be something great, but in the end it was too unbelievable and scarce in good qualities to be redeemable.

It can't be blamed on just one person's performance, but I would put a vast majority of the blame on Lindsay Lohan, the script and the production.

Grant Bowler showed a lot of potential and often it either seemed like he was either the only one actually acting in a scene (with Lohan) or he was trying to illicit some kind of emotional reaction in her performances that her responses to this was almost always met with a flat note. You could completely feel and see the disconnect between them and their own personal expectations. I felt like he put in his all and that he was trying his best to stay in character, but her personality was far more visible and opague than her acting on any level that the believability was just not there. I found myself feeling pity for him and the rest of the cast, but often the bad dialogue just amplified these problems ten-fold.

The sense of time/space was very vague too. Scenes would change often but you had no idea how time had progressed. There was no real feel of what time period you were in or the energy of the era you were living in. Many of the scenes looked the same or the vibe was always the same. You had to rely on the text that would appear that would tell you the shift in time, but I looked away at one point and found myself totally lost time-wise in the film. This made the film feel like it was crawling to finish and made it feel like they hadn't finished editing. Almost like they didn't get enough good scenes, they just decided to put in what made the most sense time-wise, but it was just snapshot moment after snapshot... it felt more like you were going through a change-of-set at a high school play than a cinematic transition like really any movie.

Looking back, had they cast someone more reliable than Lindsay Lohan in terms of acting and personality, they would've stood a better chance of finding someone whose chemistry would've matched Grant Bowler's acting. This film probably would not have struggled so much to make the dialogue work. However, her acting felt 'rushed' as there was no real energy there and she was sleep walking through the scenes.

On the plus side, my interest in Elizabeth Taylor grew so much after this film because I felt like it did her so little justice... Lindsay especially made Taylor seem more estranged to the viewer after her performances. For anyone who wants to know more about Elizabeth Taylor, they would do better to read a biography and watch a few of her movies than to watch this film... this film does her little justice.