jm10701 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.

Syl Big Edie was right. Nobody has made a film documentary about this mother-daughter eccentric before. Their lives have inspired not only a documentary but a musical stage production on Broadway. Both mother and daughter Beales will live in immortality whether on stage somewhere or being seen in a documentary or this film. Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore are perfect in playing Big Edie and Little Edie. Drew stunned me in her performance as the flamboyant outspoken artistic and maybe misunderstood Little Edie who has big dreams. They live in a dilapidating mansion called Grey Gardens in East Hampton, Long Island, New York which Big Edie calls home and has for over 30 years. She refuses to leave her estate and downsize. Jeanne Tripplehorn's performance of Jackie Onassis is quite downplayed but sensitive. When she says to Edie, I wished it was you to marry a Kennedy. You feel the pain and anguish in her voice. Jackie helps her aunt and cousin in cleaning up the estate once she learns that they could be evicted and homeless. Ken Howard is fine as the husband and father. There is a need to understand them more and to why they remained isolated with their pet raccoons and cats. But Big Edie's right, nobody has made a film about them in 1975 and they have been the subject of discussion. I marveled at how Drew became Little Edie. Big Edie loved to sing at her parties during the summer season in the Hamptons. Their legendary lives will never be forgotten and this film is a tribute to their legacy.

longcooljolie Congratulations to HBO for producing such a high-quality movie.Magazines and the internet ran some nice pieces about GG when it first appeared. The transformation of the "Edies" from high society maven/debutante to little more than bag ladies can be a fascinating subject. Many people have stated that they wondered if Drew Barrymore was up to the challenge of portraying "Little Edie," but the Golden Globe she won was well deserved! Both Drew Barrymore's and Jessica Langes' acting challenges were to show the glamour and dignity of the Edie's at their younger ages and their slow descents into the ravages of old age and decades of unbridled eccentricity.The art direction was stunning in creating the world of 1936. Some of the scenes early in the movie, at Little Edie's debutante ball, for example, had me spellbound in silent wonder. One of the most telling moments occurred during this scene, when Big Edie says "When you get married to a man and he gives you a long leash, you can do anything you want." Some of the lesser roles create huge impressions in the movie, for example Ken Howard's portrayal of Phelan Beale, the exasperated and hollowed patriarch, who looks at his wife and daughter with such pain in his eyes. Jeanne Triplehorn, who appears in only one scene as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis registers the right amount of grief, disbelief, and tempered disgust at the state of her aunt/cousin's lives.Many people have written about how shocking it was for the women to allow their lives to crumble into such a state of disrepair on so many levels. Dissociated states can be very powerful, however. Big Edie may have only been able to see the glamour and happiness radiating from Grey Gardens in its heyday, while Little Edie was just waiting and waiting for her day in the sun.In today's world, there would have been interventions by the relatives, lawsuits, and both women would have been soused with medications. Thankfully it happened in the relatively innocent period of the 60's and 70's so we have this interesting story.

Robert D. Ruplenas ****possible spoiler***** It's a real challenge to make a movie about a mother and daughter both equally quasi-demented, deluded, and self-absorbed that holds our interest and makes us care about them. And this flick doesn't meet the challenge. I remember a critic saying once that the truest test of film-making is to make us care about the characters. After watching the insufferable antics of these two highly unlikable women for about forty-five minutes I reached the "why do I care" stage. I was strongly tempted to press the "stop", button, something I have done for a very limited list of truly awful movies, but by then the "train wreck" syndrome had set in; i.e. you know, it's a horrible situation but still you can't take your eyes away and you want to see how bad the damage is. I have not seen the original "Grey Gardens" documentary done by the Maysles brothers, but it is difficult to avoid thinking of them as two vultures, for salaciously poking into the lives of two women who, like so many others with less famous connections, have fallen into decrepitude, squalor and semi-insanity. If these women had not been related to Jacqueline Kennedy, would the original documentary have been made? But I digress. I did watch all the way to the end and the final "reconciliation" scene was to me neither moving nor convincing. Fuggedaboutit.