To me, this movie is perfection.

Simply Perfect

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Show business sure is weird.Edie Beale was a charming, fascinating person who never made it until she played herself for the Maysles brothers. Drew Barrymore is a nice person with less talent and charm than Edie had in her big toe. Both came from famous families. The one with far less talent became a big star, and the other died in obscurity.I truly like and admire Drew Barrymore as a person, and I had hoped that this movie would prove me wrong about her as an actor, would prove that she DOES have talent and CAN play characters who are not herself, but it didn't. None of the Barrymores could; they all had such strong, distinctive personalities that they were always the Barrymores, regardless of what characters they were supposed to be playing. It was true about Lionel, Ethel and John, and it's true about Drew. She can't help it; she has those Barrymore genes.I watched her pretending to be Edie Beale for almost two hours, and every second of that time I was yearning for the real thing. This is a trashy TV movie that adds nothing worthwhile to the real, original, fantastic Grey Gardens starring the real Beales instead of Hollywood stars trying and failing to impersonate them. But the hordes of TV addicts who can't get anything until they see it acted out on TV by famous actors think this is a masterpiece. Go figure.

I'd seen the original documentary when it opened, and was strangely drawn to the surreal, tragic lives of those women. This production - astonishingly - honors everything that was real and touching in that relationship. I cannot believe that HBO wouldn't in some way make caricatures out of the Beales, but they do not. This is a lovely, sad, touching film. If there's a discordant note, it's the necessary evil of Tripplehorn's Jackie reaction when she arrives to save the day. It's a thankless role and difficult scene, but even this could've been much worse. That aside - Lange is brilliant and intensely real, and Barrymore...well, I've never been a fan. Until now. This is a performance crafted out of sheer integrity and skill. As richly as HBO deserves derision for its garbage, this warrants an ovation.

How can anyone watching this not feel anything but compassion and pity for these two women? Neither are mean or evil.....they just refuse to accept reality. The acting performances of Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore are extraordinary. These two women descend into a world where (among other delusions) they don't even understand that their house is completely unfit to live in, and that it is perfectly acceptable to have raccoons and cats living in your house. It's a great study of what co-dependency is all about. You really can't even get upset with the two sons...how can you reason with a woman who will not listen to simple common sense? One of the best parts is that it is based on a real story. Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore are outstanding. This film is definitely worth watching.

An American tragedy if there ever was one: A story of two fallen women, mother and daughter. This film is best appreciated along with the original documentary of same name, done in 1975. In the 2009 film, Lange and Barrymore are both outstanding. Drew deserved her Golden Globe with her best performance. She captures the look and emotional immaturity of "Little Edie." The one thing she didn't capture was the flashes of Edie's brilliant mind. As young women, both mother and daughter were stunning beauties, but they fancied themselves as singers and dancers, which neither were. Little Edie, if she had a true talent, would probably have been in poetry, her brother was an excellent writer-only her untreated mental illness held her back. In a nutshell, these two women were used to having servants and having everything done for them, and who had the rug pulled out from under them by Big Edie's separation and their following lack of money. A reversal of fortune. As time passed, Mother Beale became lonely and she was dominating by nature, while her daughter was gentle and sweet, mentally ill, and had no other place to go. They kept each other company for 20 years, and without servants, they simply stopped doing anything. They never took out the garbage or cleaned, and were surrounded by cats and even fed the critters in the attic. They simply entertained each other as if they both were still in high society, reliving their past glories and current resentments. The Beale women were like modern day Magnificent Ambersons or Blanche Dubois's, holding onto their past gentility while being unable to see for themselves what they had become. A Fascinating story showing the fine line between success and failure, and the difference between talent and ambition. These ladies sought their life's fulfillment in places in which they had no talent. Little Edie was brilliant and artistic; she just wasn't an actress or dancer.