Postcards from the Edge

1990 dramatic comedy

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: 17/20)

Plot: Based on Carrie Fisher's memoirs, this is about an actress dealing with a drug problem and an overbearing mother.

This would make a nice pairing with last year's Lady Bird. That may be why I had trouble connecting with it. So much of it is about that mother-daughter relationship, and as a person who has been neither a mother nor a daughter, it's almost like I'm not the audience. I'm also not sure what this had to say about mother-daughter relationships or even what Carrie Fisher wanted to say about her own.

I also wonder what the message about drug and alcohol use is here. Both are treated a little flippantly, and I realize that's part of the point because it's part of what makes these two women flawed human beings. This isn't exactly a morality tale as much as it's a story of the growth of one woman and one mother-daughter relationship.

Meryl Streep plays this damaged and self-damaging character well enough. She gets a few big moments where she can do her Meryl Streep thing, and she shows off her vocal chops with the Oscar-nominated "I'm Checkin' Out," a song penned by Shel Silverstein of all people. She also gets far too many lines that are variations of the line "Well, we weren't doing much sleeping, wink, wink." But it's really Shirley MacLaine who knocked me out here. It seems like every time I see her, I'm amazed at just how good she is. She also gets a great musical number that calls for her character to overdo things, and she overdoes things so naturally. Streep and MacLaine have a lot of fun talking over each other here, and all the scenes they're in together are electric, even the quieter ones.

Dennis Quaid's pretty good here, and Gene Hackman is his usual dependable self even though I don't really understand his character. Don't talk to me about Gene Hackman anyway.

My favorite moments in this are the ones on movie sets, the neat little visual tricks that Mike Nichols throws at us. The desert backdrop door, a hang from the building. Those are cute.