Not just for the stars (Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor) but also for the audience who had spent a better part of the previous decade reading about Liz and Dick wherever they went. The two part TV movie has them as a fictional couple who are a slightly tamer version of themselves, going through marital turmoil and being drama king and queen, fortunate in having fictional children and none in real life.
I doubt their marital squabbles in their private life were as calm as they are here, but it's very apparent that as heated as they were both as fictional characters and themselves that a lengthy relationship would create explosions without dynamite attached. In a sense, this film accomplished one thing for this viewer. Having watched all their movies and groaned over most of them, I never have to view any of them ever again.
The presence of Carrie Nye as the boozy socialite who has an affair with Burton has camp elements mainly because she became Tallulah #2 after Ms. Bankhead passed away. Nye, who will seem like a female impersonator to some viewers, did indeed play off her resemblance to the Alabama foghorn, and for better or worse, she walks away with the film, both parts. Taylor fortunately underplays, braying softer than normal, but Burton is obviously just there for the check, walking through most of it. I enjoyed it more on a camp level than for serious drama.
I doubt their marital squabbles in their private life were as calm as they are here, but it's very apparent that as heated as they were both as fictional characters and themselves that a lengthy relationship would create explosions without dynamite attached. In a sense, this film accomplished one thing for this viewer. Having watched all their movies and groaned over most of them, I never have to view any of them ever again.
The presence of Carrie Nye as the boozy socialite who has an affair with Burton has camp elements mainly because she became Tallulah #2 after Ms. Bankhead passed away. Nye, who will seem like a female impersonator to some viewers, did indeed play off her resemblance to the Alabama foghorn, and for better or worse, she walks away with the film, both parts. Taylor fortunately underplays, braying softer than normal, but Burton is obviously just there for the check, walking through most of it. I enjoyed it more on a camp level than for serious drama.